Latest Planetary engineering Stories

Researchers say that strategic farming practices might be part of the solution for curbing global warming. According to calculations reported online on 15 January in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, by planting crop varieties that better reflect sunlight back out to space, summertime temperatures could be reduced by more than one degree Celsius throughout much of central North America and mid-latitude Eurasia. That reduction is equivalent to seasonally offsetting about 20 percent of...

UCLA scientist sees many geoengineering plans as 'preposterous'Global warming, some have argued, can be reversed with a large-scale "geoengineering" fix, such as having a giant blimp spray liquefied sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere or building tens of millions of chemical filter systems in the atmosphere to filter out carbon dioxide.But Richard Turco, a professor in the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and a member and founding director of UCLA's Institute of...

The icy seas between Australia and Antarctica could become a money generator by engineering nature to soak up carbon dioxide and then selling carbon credits worth millions of dollars.But many scientists believe the concept of using nature to mop up mankind's excess CO2 to fight global warming is fraught with risk and uncertainty.An Australian research body suggests more research is needed before commercial ventures are allowed to fertilize oceans on a large scale and over many years to...

Scientists are expanding the search for extraterrestrial life -- and they've set their sights on some very unearthly planets.Cold "Super-Earths" -- giant, "snowball" planets that astronomers have spied on the outskirts of faraway solar systems -- could potentially support some kind of life, they have found.Such planets are plentiful; experts estimate that one-third of all solar systems contain super-Earths. "We know there are a lot of super-Earths out there, and the...

The UK's Royal Society is conducting an investigation to determine if ambitious engineering schemes could reduce the impact of global warming."Geo-engineering" experiments, such as putting mirrors into space and iron filings in oceans, are being proposed and the society says they must be properly assessed - however fantastical.Climate scientists and engineers' groups will study a variety of these ideas and produce a report by the middle of next year.However, environmental groups are...

A Nobel Prize winning scientist said on Tuesday that the current lagging economy could provide Earth with a much-needed break from climate change-inducing emissions of carbon dioxide. Atmospheric scientist Paul J Crutzen, known for discussing the possibility of blitzing the stratosphere with sulfur particles to cool the earth, said a global economic slowdown could help slow growth of carbon dioxide emissions. Furthermore, although the global economic turmoil may also divert focus from efforts...

By Ayash, Tarek Gong, Sunling; Jia, Charles Q ABSTRACT Sea salt aerosols play a dual role in affecting the atmospheric radiative balance. Directly, sea salt particles scatter the incoming solar radiation and absorb the outgoing terrestrial radiation. By acting as cloud condensation nuclei, sea salt aerosols indirectly modulate the atmospheric radiative budget through their effective contribution to cloud formation. Using the Canadian Aerosol Module (CAM)-Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling...

The evils of global warming and ozone depletion are competing problems, at least in Antarctica, the results of two new studies suggest. Schemes to pump sulfur into the atmosphere to counteract global warming might help cool the Earth, but they could also cause problems at the poles, scientists warned today. Continuous injections could drastically deplete polar ozone, delaying the recovery of the current ozone hole over Antarctica by several decades. And another study finds that if...

A proposed method of injecting sulfate particles into the stratosphere in order to fight the effects of global warming, would have a drastic impact on Earth's protective ozone layer, researchers said in a new study.Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and colleagues conducted the study, which was published Thursday in Science Express.Researchers looked at the possible effects of "geoengineering" methods of cancelling out the impacts of global warming. One of...

SOCORRO, N.M. -- A New Mexico Tech scientist believes he has found a way to head off dangerous climate change. Oliver Wingenter said the idea is simple - fertilize the ocean so that more plankton can grow.Plankton growing in the ocean emits a gas known as dimethyl sulfide, or DMS, that once in the atmosphere, helps spur cloud formation. That, in turn, would cool the planet and offset some of the global warming caused by human emitted greenhouse gases, he said.World governments are looking for...