The Shortwave Radiative Flux Response to an Injection of Sea Salt Aerosols in the Gulf of Mexico

Marine cloud brightening (MCB) has been proposed as a potential means of geoengineering the climate, temporarily providing cooling to offset some of the effects of climate change. Marine sky brightening (MSB), involving the direct scattering of sunlight from sea salt injection into the marine boundary layer, has been proposed as an additional geoengineering method that could work in areas that are not regularly cloudy. Here, we use a regional atmospheric model to simulate MCB and MSB over the Gulf of Mexico and nearby land, a highly populated and economically important region that is not characterized by persistent marine stratocumulus cloud cover. Injection of sea salt in the Aitken mode from a region in the central Gulf of Mexico equivalent to 10.8 Tg yr(-1) produces an upwards 8.4 W m(-2) radiative flux change across the region at the top of the atmosphere, largely due to cloud property changes. Comparatively, a similar mass injection in the accumulation mode produces a 3.1 W m(-2) radiative flux change driven primarily by direct scattering. Injection of even larger particles produces a much smaller radiative flux change. Shortwave flux changes due to clouds are largely driven by an increase in cloud droplet number concentration and an increase in cloud liquid water path (each contributing about 45% to the flux change), with a much lower contribution from cloud fraction changes (10%).

Automated summary

Marine cloud brightening and marine sky brightening are proposed as geoengineering methods to mitigate climate change by providing temporary cooling in areas with limited cloud cover. Injecting sea salt into the Gulf of Mexico can change cloud properties and lead to radiative flux changes, with different particle sizes resulting in varying degrees of flux change.