26 March 2024
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Across the globe, scientists from various fields are researching ways to reverse global climate change.
A variety of methods are being considered, including adding sulfate aerosols to the stratosphere to help reflect more solar radiation to capture carbon from the atmosphere. The Planetary Sunshade Foundation is promoting the deployment of a large “sunshade” in space that would temporarily block solar radiation and cool the Earth.
Would something like that work, though? Dr. Nickolas Solomey, who is a professor of mathematics, statistics, and physics at Wichita State University’s Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Kelly Kabler, who finished her graduate certificate in space science at Wichita State in December, wanted to find out.
“You hear a lot of big-name people talking about some ideas, like, ‘Let’s have a space shield to block out some of the sun — cool the planet with some shadows,’” said Dr. Solomey. “From a science point of view, there are some questions.”
Dr. Solomey and Kabler wanted to answer three questions:
How big does a sunshade need to be?
How fast will it work?
What is the effectiveness of a shade with no other changes in carbon dioxide emissions?
Dr. Solomey and Kabler determined that for it to be effective, the sunshade would need to be 900 miles wide to block 10-15% of sunlight to reduce the atmospheric temperature by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the pre-industry level. Their data concluded that reaching that goal would take 12-15 years.
“We tweaked the models throughout the course of the semester to make it more and more realistic,” says Kabler. “The final answer, really, was that (a sunshade) is not totally plausible as the sole mechanism for slowing down climate change. There would have to be other things that come into play to help with it.”
Dr. Solomey and Kabler concluded that without reducing manmade greenhouse gas emissions from industry and transportation, the sunshade would only be effective for 50-60 years before temperatures climbed back up. Transitioning to alternatives like electric vehicles and transportation sources and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is the only permanent solution to stopping global climate change.
Dr. Solomey and Kabler will present their paper, “Slowing Climate Change: Is There Relief in the Shadow,” at the Innovation in Climate Resilience conference on April 22-25 in Washington, D.C.