Questions from an Expert

(note: Below are excerpts  from an article by G. Bala, printed on January 10, 2009. Although Mr. Bala apparently is a frequent contributor to  climate research, in this paper he cites his reservations about using atmospheric aerosols (chemtrails)  in the fight against global warming.  Keep in mind that chemtrails of unknown chemistry are already being deployed every day  and nearly everywhere, under the military and 'scientific study' umbrellas.)

Problems with geoengineering schemes to

combat climate change (PDF)

Author: G. Bala

CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 96, NO. 1, 10 JANUARY 2009

The possibilities of deliberately bringing about countervailing climatic changes were suggested in the 1965 US President's Scientific Advisory Committee report. 

About ten years later, methods based on increasing the aerosol content in the lower stratosphere for climate modification were proposed by a Russian scientist, Budyko. Sulphur could be injected by aircraft, rockets, or missiles.

An alternative to direct injection [of sulphur]  is to increase the sulphur content of the jet fuel.
The main concern raised by Budyko was about its effects on the ozone content in the stratosphere.

A large number of flights in the stratosphere can also lead to changes in the stratospheric climatic conditions.

Sulphur injections in the troposphere were [also] not recommended by Budyko for the following reasons:

Aerosols in the troposphere have a lifetime of only weeks, while stratospheric aerosols have a lifetime of 1-2 years; tropospheric injection would require 100 times more sulphur than [stratospheric] injections.   

Image Credits:

first image depicts various geoengineering schemes, from Current Science article 
second image of recent ozone levels, from the Climate Prediction Center
last image of volcanic Sulphur, from thenakedscientists.com

(to read PDF of complete article, click here)

As If It's New

(note: excerpt and associated image from New Scientist, 09/03/09)

Geoengineering is No Longer Unmentionable

Most people and nations now recognise the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid dangerous climate change. However, there is a growing fear that this fragile support for action could be at risk because geoengineering - the large-scale manipulation of the environment to counteract climate change - is now receiving serious attention from scientists, policy-makers and the media.

Our study suggests that the idea of geoengineering could spur people to reduce their carbon footprint.

(for more of the article, click here)

(link to Royal Society report in which article is commenting on: "Geoengineering the Climate")

Goodbye Blue Skies

(note: excerpt from article “Moving Heaven and Earth”, by Graeme Wood, pp. 70-76, The Atlantic, July/August 2009)

If we were transported forward in time, to an Earth ravaged by catastrophic climate change, we might see long, delicate strands of fire hose stretching into the sky, like spaghetti, attached to zeppelins hovering 65,000 feet in the air.

Factories on the ground would pump 10 kilos of sulfur dioxide up through those hoses every second. And at the top, the hoses would cough a sulfurous pall into the sky.

At sunset on some parts of the planet, these puffs of aerosolized pollutant would glow a dramatic red, like the skies in Blade Runner. During the day, they would shield the planet from the sun's full force, keeping temperatures cool- so long as the puffing never ceased.

Technology that could redden the skies and chill the planet is available right now.

Within a few years we could cool the Earth to temperatures not regularly seen since James Watt's steam engine belched its first smoky plume in the late 18^th century.

And we could do it cheaply: $100 billion could reverse anthropogenic climate change entirely, and some experts suspect that a hundredth of that sum could suffice.

To stop global warming the old-fashioned way, by cutting carbon emissions, would cost on the order of $1 trillion yearly. If this idea sounds unlikely, consider that President Obama's science adviser, John Holdren, said in April that he thought the administration would consider it, “if we get desperate enough.”

(for more, click here)

Image of zeppelin: The Atlantic Magazine

"Tinkering" With The Weather in U.S.

(note: excerpt from USAtoday.com, 10/02/07)

Cloud seeders prime the skies for needed rain

LAKIN, Kan. — Water is prized in western Kansas, where aquifers are suffering and farms are miles wide and generations deep; a scant half inch of rain can mean the difference between a successful season and a failed one.

But when it comes in the form of fist-sized balls of ice known as hail, water's more than a menace. It can damage and even destroy crops.

That's where the Western Kansas Weather Modification Program and other cloud-seeding operations across the western U.S. come in. The WKWMP is among about 10 programs that tinker with the weather — either by trying to cut the size of hail or boost rainfall and snowpack. They do it largely by shooting up storm clouds with silver iodide or dry ice mixtures.

(more)

Pakistan Battles Drought with Cloud Seeding Experiments

(note: from The Tribune, 08/08/2000)

Pakistan creates artificial rain

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Meteorological Department has succeeded in creating artificial rains in drought-hit Thar desert, Cholistan, Khuzdar and other areas.

Making this announcement, the department’s Director-General Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry told the Press here that of the 24 cloud-seeding experiments conducted during the last six weeks, 15 had been successful.

Chaudhry said suitable clouds for the experiment were identified first, before chemicals were sprayed on them with the help of aircraft from the Army Aviation and Plant Protection Department.

The chemicals used for cloud seeding were absolutely environment friendly, and included silver iodide, calcium chloride, salt, dry ice, dust, and liquid carbon dioxide.

“In our experiments we used salt to create desired atmospheric conditions for the rainfall. We used 40 kg of salt for a 50-square-kilometre radius in our experiments. So literally, we only paid for fuelling the aircraft, costing about Rs 8,000 for one-hour flight,” Chaudhry said.

WM Changes Water Cycle

(note: excerpt from 05/28/08 Science Daily)

Geoengineering Could Slow Down Global Water Cycle

As fossil fuel emissions continue to climb, reducing the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth would definitely have a cooling effect on surface temperatures.

However, a new study from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, led by atmospheric scientist Govindasamy Bala, shows that this intentional manipulation of solar radiation also could lead to a less intense global water cycle. (image left of water cycle from NOAA.gov)

The reduction in sunlight can be accomplished by geoengineering schemes.


There are two classes: the so-called "sunshade" geoengineering scheme, which would mitigate climate change by intentionally manipulating the solar radiation on the earth's surface; the other category removes atmospheric CO₂ and sequesters it into the terrestrial vegetation, oceans or deep geologic formations. (image right of geoengineering ideas, from ScienceDaily.com)

The sunshade schemes include placing reflectors in space, injecting sulfate or other reflective particles into the stratosphere, or enhancing the reflectivity of clouds by injecting cloud condensation nuclei in the troposphere.

When CO₂ is doubled as predicted in the future, a 2 percent reduction in sunlight is sufficient to counter the surface warming.

While the surface temperature response is the same for CO₂ and solar forcings, the rainfall response can be very different.

"We found that while climate sensitivity can be the same for different forcing mechanisms, the hydrological sensitivity is very different," Bala said.

The global mean rainfall increased approximately 4 percent for a doubling of CO₂ and decreases by 6 percent for a reduction in sunlight in his modeling study.

"Because the global water cycle is more sensitive to changes in solar radiation than to increases in CO₂, geoengineering could lead to a decline in the intensity of the global water cycle" Bala said.

(for complete article, click here)

Last Resort...sort of

(note: excerpt from New Scientist, 04/09/2009)

Hacking the planet: The only climate solution left?

In a room in London late last year, a group of British politicians were grilling a selection of climate scientists on geoengineering - the notion that to save the planet from climate change, we must artificially tweak its thermostat by firing fine dust into the atmosphere to deflect the sun's rays, for instance, or perhaps even by launching clouds of mirrors into space.

Surely the scientists gave such a heretical idea short shrift. After all, messing with the climate is exactly what got us into such trouble in the first place. The politicians on the committee certainly seemed to believe so. "It is not sensible, is it? It is not a serious suggestion?"

Had the question been posed a few years ago, most climate scientists would have agreed. But the mood is changing. In the face of potentially catastrophic climate change, the politicians and scientists all agreed that since cuts to carbon emissions will likely fall short we need to be exploring "Plan B". Climatologists have hit a "social tipping point" says Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia, UK.

What's more, respected scientists, including Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, and groups such as the UK's Royal Society, are already assessing the risks and benefits.

(more of the article)

Independent or Part of HAARP Network?

(note: The HAARP program is part of a military installation in Alaska, as we've reported in other posts.. Although there are other countries currently doing electromagnetic research in the far north, no one knows for sure if the installations take into account the HAARP activity or whether they choose to ignore the very real electrical charges that HAARP generates into the ionosphere. Below we feature a smaller installation based on 2 northern continents. Excerpts and all images unless otherwise noted from LA TROBE University)

TIGER (Tasman International Geospace Environment Radar) is part of an international network of similar HF radars called SuperDARN (Super Dual Auroral Radar Network) operated by ten nations to provide simultaneous coverage of both southern and northern polar regions.

TIGER explores the impact of solar disturbances on Earth by monitoring the location of aurora and related phenomena occurring in the ionosphere - 100 to 300km above the Earth.

It consists of two radars, one in Tasmania and one in New Zealand, with beams that intersect and explore an area half the size of Australia.

The radars direct HF radio signals via the ionosphere towards Antarctica and detect weak echoes from structures in the ionosphere.

These echoes are used to form images of the ionosphere structures and measure their speed and direction of motion.

The radars also detect echoes from meteors which are used to calculate wind speeds at heights of around 100km.

Signals scattered from the sea are also detected and methods of deducing the sea-state from these signals are being developed.

Results from the operation of TIGER include greater knowledge of space physics and space weather processes which is required to improve management of radio communications and navigation systems such as GPS. It also has relevance to satellite operations and magnetic surveying for minerals and electricity supplies.

When the sun's corona ejects huge amounts of matter that reach the Earth, there are rapid changes in the wind speed and temperature in the ionosphere as well as the magnetosphere - that region where the Earth's magnetic field interacts with the solar wind.

Auroras are caused by electrons striking molecules and atoms after entering the Earth's atmosphere near the poles. (image left: salatshots.com)

The location of aurora can move 500 km in less than a minute during magnetic storms and can disrupt communication and navigation systems. TIGER monitors such storms and can provide real-time data on space weather storms.

TIGER is controlled remotely from La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. It uses HF radio waves in the 8 - 20 MHz range. It consumes only 2 kW of power, the same as some electric kettles and transmits an average of 200W - the same as two bright light globes.

TIGER - Bruny Radar

In developing the Tasman International Geospace Environment Radar (TIGER) the aim has been to extend the SuperDARN network in the Southern Hemisphere, but with the important difference of extending coverage to the sub-auroral region.

This provides opportunity to observe new phenomena and to improve the coverage of auroral phenomena during magnetic storms when the aurora expands equatorward of the footprints of the other radars in the SuperDARN network.

Since the radar is much closer to the south magnetic pole than the south geographic pole, this makes it an ideal location from which to monitor the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth's magnetic field.

Its more northerly location relative to the other Antarctic radars also allows it to better monitor events that move northwards during magnetic storms and out of the view of the Antarctic based radars.

The TIGER - Bruny radar is directly across the magnetic pole from PACE, the British Antarctic Survey's SuperDARN radar at Halley, Antarctica. The TIGER - PACE will form a unique radar pair providing important simultaneous measurements of the aurora in the noon and midnight sectors.

The TIGER - Bruny radar is based on the exisiting third generation HF radar constructed by the University of Leicester, including improvements to the transmitters, power supplies and microcontrollers.

This radar is a Mono system, transmitting one set of frequences at a time where as it's counterpart TIGER - Unwin is a Stereo Radar and transmits two frequencies concurrently at one time.

All SuperDARN radars use common basic operating software which can readily be adapted by each radar group for special operations or new modes which may later be adopted by the entire radar network.

TIGER - Unwin Radar

The Unwin Radar footprint covers the lower latitude portion of the auroral oval and the ionospheric trough.

The New Zealand component, located on the South Island of New Zealand near the city of Invercargill, began operation in November 2004.

The TIGER - Unwin radar is based on the exisiting third generation HF radar constructed by the University of Leicester, including improvements to the transmitters, power supplies and microcontrollers.

This radar is a Stereo system, thereby transmitting two different set of frequencies simultaneously at one time.
Where as it's counterpart TIGER - Bruny is a Mono system and transmits one set of frequencies at a one time.

Unwin is only one of three stereo radars to be operated in the SuperDARN community and the only HF Stereo radar to be operating in the southern hemisphere.

Hurricane Help From Chemtrails?

(Images below from: NEXSAT and The National Hurricane Center, text authored by A. de Roche of Blanket Effect Staff)

On 10/25/08, Chemtrail spraying appeared over Colombia's northern coastal region.(image at left)

Approximately one week later, on 11/02/08, when substantial 'cloud' formation had built up over the Atlantic ocean, new chemtrails were seen on the northwestern storm front line.(image at right)

To the left is a satellite image of what's left of Hurricane 'Paloma' after it was an impressive category 4 hurricane with winds up to 135 mph/115 knots last weekend. (click image for current animation, image is slow to load)

Although confirming data is sketchy at this point, the obvious chemtrail patches in Paloma's evolving history do raise some eyebrows in the Weather Modification research community.

Another Opinion

(note: PBS's award winning NOVA series recently featured an episode entitled "Dimming the Sun". Although what is being claimed on the program as "contrails"can't always explain the type or frequency of what we are seeing in our skies, the following excerpt and images, except where otherwise noted, are from an editorial on the NOVA site)

The Contrail Effect
by Peter Tyson

Are vapor trails from aircraft influencing the climate, and if so, should we worry?

I've always wanted to hate contrails, the "condensation trails" streaming out from behind jets. They're man-made.

They force lines on nature, which knows no lines. They arise out of pollution, and they generate visual pollution—aircraft graffiti that can erase blue from the sky and light from the sun. All good reasons to despise these artificial clouds.

But I don't. I've always been drawn to them. When I see one above, I like to run my eye along its length until I find the plane, a tiny silver toy.

I like to wonder at the blank space between the plane and the start of the contrail—emptiness full of potential—and then to see the churning new cloud as it forms, a tumbling cascade.

When the roiling slows and the newborn cloud settles into a contrail proper, I admire its perfection: a straight white line sharply etched against the blue.

Even when numerous contrails made fat by the wind crisscross the sky, I don't mind.

Well, I might now. After a lifetime of enjoying contrails, it came as a surprise to me to learn recently that something so ephemeral may not be a harmless by-product of the jet age but may in fact impact the climate. (image left from atmospheric cartoons)

This is of particular concern in well-traveled air corridors, where contrails by the hundreds can spread into man-made cirrus clouds that can both block sunlight from reaching the Earth and trap radiated heat from escaping to space.

Whether contrails cause a net cooling or a net warming, even whether their effect is something to worry about, remains unclear.

But with air traffic expected to double or even triple by 2050, leading contrail researchers say the influence of these artificial clouds cannot be ignored.

(for more of this article, click here)