• About
  • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Contact
Celebrating our 1,000th edition. The climate news you need
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  FEATURED
BREAKING: 40% of Fossil Fuels Now Under Development Must Stay in the Ground May 17, 2022
Rocky Mountain Glaciers ‘Past Tipping Point’, with Some Expected to Vanish by 2030 May 17, 2022
UK Activists Block Russian Oil Tanker From Docking in Essex May 17, 2022
EXCLUSIVE: Bid to Revive Doomed Nova Scotia LNG Project Collides with Germany’s Net-Zero Plans May 16, 2022
3,800 Residents Ordered to Evacuate after Flooding in Hay River, NWT May 16, 2022
Next
Prev

Geo-engineering 'could imperil Sahel'

March 31, 2013
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

 

EMBARGOED until 1700 GMT on Sunday 31 March
Attempts to tackle climate change by altering the atmosphere – geo-engineering – may have unpredictable effects. They could even trigger disaster in a drought-prone region of Africa, a study suggests.

LONDON, 31 March – Less than three weeks after two US researchers called for global agreement on the governance of geo-engineering research, British meteorologists have provided a case study in potential geo-engineering disaster.

Jim Haywood from the Met Office Hadley Centre and colleagues report in Nature Climate Change that fine particles concentrated in the stratosphere could precipitate calamitous drought in the Sahel region of Africa.

The team analysed historical observations from 1900 to 2010 and found that substantial volcanic eruptions in the Northern hemisphere – substantial enough to lift huge clouds of aerosols into the upper atmosphere – preceded three of the four driest summers in the region.

Furious volcanic blasts have been historically associated with climate change: an eruption of Mt Tambora in what is now Indonesia in 1815 was followed by Europe’s notorious “year without a summer” in 1816, along with widespread harvest failure, famine and outbreaks of disease.

The eruption of Mt Pinatubo in 1991 was followed by what climate scientists were later to call “the Pinatubo effect” – noticeable global cooling in the following years.

But what concerns Professor Haywood and others is not the random nature of volcanic eruption – difficult to predict and impossible to prevent – but the possibility of deliberate injection of aerosols into the stratosphere to moderate global warming.

The Sahel is the name given to a 1,000-kilometre band of savannah in Africa south of the Sahara, stretching from Mauretania in the west to Eritrea on the Red Sea coast.

The four driest periods in this relatively arid region – these periods bear the deadpan scientific label of negative Sahelian precipitation anomalies – were in 1913, 1972, 1983 and 1984. Three of these dry spells followed an eruption of Katmai in Alaska in 1912 and of El Chichon in Mexico in 1982.

“…a global governance agreement for geo-engineering is essential before any practical geo-engineering system is deployed…”

The extended drought between 1970 and 1990 in the Sahel region claimed 250,000 lives and created 10 million refugees: it was one of the world’s biggest humanitarian disasters.

All kinds of causes were evoked, including overgrazing, natural variability and industrial exhausts, but Professor Haywood and his colleagues think that volcanic eruptions also strongly influence the sea temperatures in the Atlantic, which are associated with Sahelian drought.

Their conclusions are provisional. Such associations are difficult to prove conclusively. They concede in their paper that “correlation does not prove causality and the sparsity of significant hemispherically asymmetric volcanic eruptions in the recent historical record hampers definitive attribution.” In other words, the jury is still out.

They simulated the impact of continued global warming into the future and found that – provided there was no geoengineering – only 11 of the 50 years between 2020 and 2070 would have negative Sahelian precipitation anomalies. Deliberate geoengineering, however, by loading aerosols into the northern hemisphere stratosphere would cause Sahelian drought.

This could possibly be countered by injecting particles into the southern hemisphere stratosphere, which might have the effect of increasing rainfall in the Sahel countries. But any good there might be countered by a consequent failure of the rains in north-east Brazil.

“Clearly, the juxtaposition of impacts leads us to believe that a global governance agreement for geo-engineering is essential before any practical geo-engineering system is deployed, and much further research is needed,” they conclude. – Climate News Network



in Uncategorized

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Mounting Drought Risk Confronts London, Other World Cities
Drought, Famine & Wildfires

Mounting Drought Risk Confronts London, Other World Cities

May 19, 2022
127
85,000-Hectare Fort Mac Wildfire Expected to Grow for Days
Drought, Famine & Wildfires

Six Traumatic Years After ‘The Beast’, Fort McMurray Remains Loyal to Big Oil

May 19, 2022
88
‘New New Math’ Means Keeping Even More Fossils in the Ground: McKibben
International Security & War

U.S. Can’t Drill Its Way to Energy Security, Jenkins Warns

May 19, 2022
58

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Mounting Drought Risk Confronts London, Other World Cities

Mounting Drought Risk Confronts London, Other World Cities

May 19, 2022
127
85,000-Hectare Fort Mac Wildfire Expected to Grow for Days

Six Traumatic Years After ‘The Beast’, Fort McMurray Remains Loyal to Big Oil

May 19, 2022
88
Ontario Contemplates ‘Ultra-Low Carbon’ Super-Agency

Ontario’s New Highway 413 Would Boost Emissions, Bake In ‘Auto-Dependent Sprawl’

May 19, 2022
64

BREAKING: 40% of Fossil Fuels Now Under Development Must Stay in the Ground

May 18, 2022
432
New Congressional Funding, Tax Credit Extensions Create ‘Enabling Conditions for Decarbonization’

ESG Becomes Latest ‘Acronym-Based Outrage’ in U.S. Republicans’ Culture Wars

May 19, 2022
63
‘New New Math’ Means Keeping Even More Fossils in the Ground: McKibben

U.S. Can’t Drill Its Way to Energy Security, Jenkins Warns

May 19, 2022
58

Recent Posts

Newfoundland Offers Suncor $175 Million to Restart Terra Nova Offshore Oilfield

Newfoundland Opens New Round of Offshore Oil Bidding

May 19, 2022
51
Farmers’ Mental Health Strained by Climate-Driven Weather Extremes

Farmers’ Mental Health Strained by Climate-Driven Weather Extremes

May 19, 2022
51
Calgary Company to Supply 180 MWh of Battery Capacity to Alberta Grid

Calgary Company to Supply 180 MWh of Battery Capacity to Alberta Grid

May 19, 2022
56
Customer Demand Pushes U.S. Utilities Toward Solar, Energy Services

Power Sector Giants Promote ‘Fair, Just Transition to Net-Zero’

May 19, 2022
51
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Haiyan

Fossils Liable For Human Rights Violations in Landmark Ruling by Philippines Commission

May 19, 2022
34
Food and Fashion Sectors Lead Widening Spread of Climate Careers

Food and Fashion Sectors Lead Widening Spread of Climate Careers

May 19, 2022
29
Next Post
British lawyers aid climate teams

British lawyers aid climate teams

The Energy Mix

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}

2022 ONTARIO GENERAL ELECTION

KEEP UP WITH ONTARIO’S CLIMATE CHANGE ELECTION

election-checkmark
Get Election Notifications

2022 ONTARIO GENERAL ELECTION

KEEP UP WITH ONTARIO’S CLIMATE CHANGE ELECTION

election-checkmark
Get Election Notifications
The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

2022 ONTARIO GENERAL ELECTION

KEEP UP WITH ONTARIO’S CLIMATE CHANGE ELECTION

election-checkmark
Get Election Notifications

2022 ONTARIO GENERAL ELECTION

KEEP UP WITH ONTARIO’S CLIMATE CHANGE ELECTION

election-checkmark
Get Election Notifications
The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

2022 Ontario General Election

Keep up with Ontario’s Climate Change Election

election-checkmark
GET THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST

2022 Ontario General Election

Keep up with Ontario’s Climate Change Election

election-checkmark
GET THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST
The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

2022 Ontario General Election

Keep up with Ontario’s Climate Change Election

election-checkmark
GET THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST

2022 Ontario General Election

Keep up with Ontario’s Climate Change Election

election-checkmark
GET THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST
The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Are you sure want to unlock this post?
Unlock left : 0
Are you sure want to cancel subscription?