Declining Geoengineering Efficacy Caused by Cloud Feedbacks in Transient Solar Dimming Experiments
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Solar radiation management (SRM) with injections of aerosols into the stratosphere has emerged as a research area of focus with the potential to cool the planet. However, the amount of SRM required to achieve a given level of cooling, and how this relationship evolves in response to increasing greenhouse gas emissions, remains uncertain. Here, we explore the evolution of solar dimming efficacy over time by defining and quantifying a new SRM feedback term, which is analogous to conventional radiative feedbacks. Using Earth system model simulations that dynamically adjust the amount of insolation to offset global mean warming from increasing CO 2 , we find that positive SRM feedbacks decrease global planetary albedo and diminish the efficacy of solar dimming. Physically, the decrease in albedo is primarily due to reductions in optically thick tropical cloud fraction in the boundary layer and midtroposphere, which is driven by a drying and destabilization of the tropical mid- to lower troposphere. These results offer an energetic explanation for reduced cloud fraction commonly observed in idealized SRM experiments, as well as reaffirm the need to understand the troposphere response, particularly from clouds, in realizable geoengineering experiments and their potential to feed back onto SRM efficacy. Significance Statement The goal of this study is to understand how the effectiveness of solar geoengineering may evolve over time. Using a climate model with the ability to directly tune the amount of incoming sunlight, we explore the potential for feedback loops in the climate system to diminish or amplify the desired effect of solar tuning, which is to offset greenhouse gas–induced warming. For this climate model and this solar geoengineering proxy, in particular, we find that feedback loops reduce Earth’s albedo and therefore diminish the desired effect of turning down the sun over time. This study lays the groundwork for understanding potential feedback loops in climate model simulations that represent solar geoengineering in a more realistic way.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it