Impacts of hemispheric solar geoengineering on tropical cyclone frequency

Jones, A. C., Haywood, J. M., Dunstone, N., Emanuel, K., Hawcroft, M. K., Hodges, K. I. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0894-229X and Jones, A. (2017) Impacts of hemispheric solar geoengineering on tropical cyclone frequency. Nature Communications, 8 (1). 1382. ISSN 2041-1723 doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-01606-0

Abstract/Summary

Solar geoengineering refers to a range of proposed methods for counteracting global warming by artificially reducing sunlight at Earth’s surface. The most widely known SG proposal is stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) which has impacts analogous to those from volcanic eruptions. Observations following major volcanic eruptions indicate that aerosol enhancements confined to a single hemisphere effectively modulate North Atlantic tropical cyclone (TC) activity in the following years. Here we investigate the effects of both single-hemisphere and global SAI scenarios on North Atlantic TC activity using the HadGEM2-ES general circulation model and various TC identification methods. We show that a robust result from all of the methods is that SAI applied to the southern hemisphere would enhance TC frequency relative to a global SAI application, and vice versa for SAI in the northern hemisphere. Our results reemphasize the perils of regional geoengineering and should motivate policymakers to regulate large-scale unilateral geoengineering deployments.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/72899
Identification Number/DOI	10.1038/s41467-017-01606-0
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	Nature Publishing Group
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