RE: [geo] Impacts of ocean albedo alteration on Arctic sea ice restoration and Northern Hemisphere climate - ERL

Sun, 03 May 2015 16:57:29 -0700

Team,

So who has a lot of money and might be convinced to thicken sea ice?

The offshore oil industry, the shipping industry, and governments around the Arctic planning to benefit from both oil and shipping.

Sea ice prevents the formation of large surface waves by limiting fetch.  Sea ice dampens waves to zero within a few hundred meters.  Sea ice is destroyed by surface waves.  (Mark Harris, "Waves of Destruction", Scientific American, May 2015).

Oil companies could shelter oil platforms with grounded rings of sea ice.  Shipping companies would benefit from calm water.  Could the governments of Canada, Denmark, Norway, and the United States be convinced to make covering the Arctic Ocean with summer sea ice a condition of ship passage or oil development? 

Mark E. Capron, PE
Ventura, California
www.PODenergy.org


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [geo] Impacts of ocean albedo alteration on Arctic sea ice
restoration and Northern Hemisphere climate - ERL
From: John Nissen <johnnissen2...@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, May 02, 2015 10:56 am
To: Peter Flynn <pcfl...@ualberta.ca>
Cc: Ken Caldeira <kcalde...@gmail.com>, Andrew Lockley
<andrew.lock...@gmail.com>, "Cvijanovic, Ivana" <cvijanov...@llnl.gov>,
geoengineering <geoengineering@googlegroups.com>, Doug MacMartin
<macma...@cds.caltech.edu>, Sev Clarke <sevcla...@me.com>, Bru Pearce
<b...@portgeorge.com>

Hi Peter,

As the paper points out, projections for sea ice suggest that the Arctic Ocean will be seasonably free before mid-century [1], and this will pose challenges in the Arctic; but there are potential impacts on the whole planet from the Arctic being locked into rapid warming: 
1. sea level will rise ever faster; 
2. methane bubbling up from the ocean bed in ever increasing quantities could add disastrously to global warming; 
3.  the jet stream could be further disrupted, causing extreme climate change in the Northern Hemisphere [2].

Thus saving the sea ice takes on a high priority for urgent action.  To minimise risk of extreme impacts, we need to restore sea ice by employing both cooling techniques (such as tropospheric cloud brightening, stratospheric aerosol cooling and ocean brightening) and ice thickening techniques.  

Furthermore we need to deal with growing impacts of Arctic warming in the pipeline: preparing for sea level rise; suppressing and/or capturing methane; and adapting to more extreme climate change than already seen this century as the jet stream meanders more and gets stuck for longer periods.

It may be possible to combine some of these techniques.  For example, sea ice could be thickened such as to capture methane bubbling up underneath it.  We need urgent study on this kind of intervention, and I would be grateful if the geoengineering googlegroup forum could be used for an open discussion on the possibilities.

Cheers, John

[1] Many reputable scientists now say that the Arctic Ocean could be seasonally ice free by 2030; and a few top sea ice experts point to the observed volume trend which suggests September ice free by 2020.

[2] See Scientific American, May 2015 issue, on Arctic waves, with reference to extreme climate change in the past.


On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 7:12 PM, Peter Flynn <peter.fl...@ualberta.ca> wrote:
If the object is restoration of sea ice, I continue to believe that a direct approach of thickening sea ice by pumping sea water onto it, thereby circumventing the self insulating feature of natural formation of sea ice, is the quickest, most direct, and most proven approach, easily terminated if any unintended consequence is observed.
 
Thickening ice by putting water onto the surface of existing ice is well proven for both fresh water and sea water. Ice roads throughout the north, including the supply road to Leningrad during WWII, are built this way. Sea water was used in the Beaufort Sea to quickly build ice islands to support drilling platforms, with maximum thicknesses greater than eight meters.
 
To the extent that the ocean can be brightened without ice, it would perhaps make more sense to do this at lower latitude, to reflect more light per square meter of brightened surface.
 
Peter
 
Peter Flynn, P. Eng., Ph. D.
Emeritus Professor and Poole Chair in Management for Engineers
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Alberta
peter.fl...@ualberta.ca
cell: 928 451 4455
 
 
 
From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Ken Caldeira
Sent: April-30-15 8:07 AM
To: Andrew Lockley
Cc: Cvijanovic, Ivana; geoengineering; Doug MacMartin
Subject: Re: [geo] Impacts of ocean albedo alteration on Arctic sea ice restoration and Northern Hemisphere climate - ERL
 
I agree that it would be good to investigate Arctic cloud brightening. 
 
We studied Arctic Ocean brightening because it has been proposed by ice911.org, among others, and has not yet been subject to scrutiny in a peer-reviewed context.
 
Also, note that ocean surface whitening has a long pedigree, being proposed by none other than the President's Science Advisory Committee in 1965.
 
 
Furthermore, we have previously analyzed effects of reducing Arctic insolation at the top of atmosphere.
 
 
The analyses of ocean surface albedo whitening and top-of-atmosphere solar insolation reduction should provide useful context for studies of effects of changes in Arctic cloud properties.  
 
Best,
Ken
 


On Wednesday, April 29, 2015, Andrew Lockley <andrew.lock...@gmail.com> wrote:
Ken
I appreciate that this is an idealised experiment, but I'm still puzzled by the design.
Surely any serious attempt to cool the land down, or to reduce global temperatures, would be based on generalised ocean cooling, in the manner of MCB.
Could you explain why you chose to investigate the pattern of ocean albedo alteration prescribed in your paper?
A
On 29 Apr 2015 23:05, "Ken Caldeira" <kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu> wrote:
Folks, 
 
Please find attached the paper cited.
 
The paper has attracted some press attention.
 
Also, here are simplified forms of two figures from the paper.
 
Best,
 
Ken
 

 
Inline image 1

Whitening the Arctic Ocean: May restore sea ice, but not climate

Science Daily - Apr 28, 2015
Ivana Cvijanovic, Ken Caldeira, Douglas G MacMartin. Impacts of ocean albedo alteration on Arctic sea ice restoration and Northern Hemisphere climate. Environmental Research Letters, 2015; 10 (4): 044020 DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/10/4/044020 ...

Geoengineering Arctic Ocean albedo will not mitigate climate change

environmentalresearchweb - 12 hours ago
But a bigger question is whether the approaches would even reduce warming as they intend, which is why Ivana Cvijanovic and Ken Caldeira at the Carnegie Institution for Science, US, together with Douglas MacMartin at the California Institute of Technology, addressed this puzzle for ocean-albedo modification. ... Some of the results were positive: an extreme albedo boost could recover 40% of the sea ice that existed pre-industrialization and cool the surface of the Arctic by some two degrees. However, the ...

Study: Arctic Whitening Might Help Ice But Not Climate

New research from Carnegie's Ivana Cvijanovic (now at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) and Ken Caldeira, as well as Douglas MacMartin of Caltech, shows that while an incredibly large effort could, in principle, restore vast amounts of sea ice by this method, it would not result in substantial cooling. As a result, it ... Imposed albedo changes and sea ice recovery alter climate outside the Arctic region too, affecting precipitation distribution over parts of the continental United States and Northeastern Pacific.
Inline image 2

Turning the oceans 'white' will NOT stop sea ice from melting

Daily Mail - 8 hours ago
The white sea ice in the Arctic Ocean (shown above) helps to reflect some of the sun's heat back into space but as it reduces, due to global warming, there are fears it will increase the impacts of climate change. ... Dr Ken Caldeira, an expert on global ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science who took part I the study, said: 'Simply put, our results indicate that whitening the surface of the Arctic Ocean would not be an effective tool for offsetting the effects of climate change caused by atmospheric greenhouse gas.

Artificially manipulating Arctic climate by 'whitening' surface of ocean to reflect ...

The Independent - Apr 28, 2015
Attempts to artificially manipulate the Arctic climate by “whitening” the surface of the ocean in order to reflect sunlight back into space and so mimic the effect of lost sea iceare almost certainly doomed to fail, scientists said. ... “Simply put, our results indicate that whitening of the surface of the Arctic Ocean would not be an effective tool for offsetting the effects of climate change cause by atmospheric greenhouse gas,” said Kenneth Caldeira, a climate researcher at the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC.
 

_______________
Ken Caldeira

Carnegie Institution for Science 
Dept of Global Ecology
260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
+1 650 704 7212 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu
website: http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab/  
blog: http://kencaldeira.org  
@KenCaldeira
 
My assistant is Dawn Ross <dr...@carnegiescience.edu>, with access to incoming emails.
 
 
On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 12:01 PM, Andrew Lockley <andrew.lock...@gmail.com> wrote:
Environmental Research Letters Volume 10 Number 4
Ivana Cvijanovic et al 2015 Environ. Res. Lett. 10 044020 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/10/4/044020
Impacts of ocean albedo alteration on Arctic sea ice restoration and Northern Hemisphere climate
OPEN ACCESS
Ivana Cvijanovic, Ken Caldeira and Douglas G MacMartin
Abstract
The Arctic Ocean is expected to transition into a seasonally ice-free state by mid-century, enhancing Arctic warming and leading to substantial ecological and socio-economic challenges across the Arctic region. It has been proposed that artificially increasing high latitude ocean albedo could restore sea ice, but the climate impacts of such a strategy have not been previously explored. Motivated by this, we investigate the impacts of idealized high latitude ocean albedo changes on Arctic sea ice restoration and climate. In our simulated 4xCO2 climate, imposing surface albedo alterations over the Arctic Ocean leads to partial sea ice recovery and a modest reduction in Arctic warming. With the most extreme ocean albedo changes, imposed over the area 70°–90°N, September sea ice cover stabilizes at ~40% of its preindustrial value (compared to ~3% without imposed albedo modifications). This is accompanied by an annual mean Arctic surface temperature decrease of ~2 °C but no substantial global mean temperature decrease. Imposed albedo changes and sea ice recovery alter climate outside the Arctic region too, affecting precipitation distribution over parts of the continental United States and Northeastern Pacific. For example, following sea ice recovery, wetter and milder winter conditions are present in the Southwest United States while the East Coast experiences cooling. We conclude that although ocean albedo alteration could lead to some sea ice recovery, it does not appear to be an effective way of offsetting the overall effects of CO2 induced global warming.
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--
_______________
Ken Caldeira

Carnegie Institution for Science 
Dept of Global Ecology
260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
+1 650 704 7212 kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu
website: http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab/  
blog: http://kencaldeira.org  
@KenCaldeira
 
My assistant is Dawn Ross <dr...@carnegiescience.edu>, with access to incoming emails.
 
 
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