The Climate Response to Stratospheric Sulfate Injections and Implications for Addressing Climate Emergencies

Stratospheric sulfate aerosol injection has been proposed to counteract anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming and prevent regional climate emergencies. Global warming is projected to be largest in the polar regions, where consequences to climate change could be emergent, but where the climate response to global warming is also most uncertain. The Community Climate System Model, version 3, is used to evaluate simulations with enhanced CO2 and prescribed stratospheric sulfate to investigate the effects on regional climate. To further explore the sensitivity of these regions to ocean dynamics, a suite of simulations with and without ocean dynamics is run. The authors find that, when global average warming is roughly canceled by aerosols, temperature changes in the polar regions are still 20%-50% of the changes in a warmed world. Atmospheric circulation anomalies are also not canceled, which affects the regional climate response. It is also found that agreement between simulations with and without ocean dynamics is poorest in the high latitudes. The polar climate is determined by processes that are highly parameterized in climate models. Thus, one should expect that the projected climate response to geoengineering will be at least as uncertain in these regions as it is to increasing greenhouse gases. In the context of climate emergencies, such as melting arctic sea ice and polar ice sheets and a food crisis due to a heated tropics, the authors find that, while it may be possible to avoid tropical climate crises, preventing polar climate emergencies is not certain. A coordinated effort across modeling centers is required to generate a more robust depiction of a geoengineered climate.