Identification

Title

The choice of baseline period influences the assessments of the outcomes of stratospheric aerosol injection

Abstract

The specifics of the simulated injection choices in the case of stratospheric aerosol injections (SAI) are part of the crucial context necessary for meaningfully discussing the impacts that a deployment of SAI would have on the planet. One of the main choices is the desired amount of cooling that the injections are aiming to achieve. Previous SAI simulations have usually either simulated a fixed amount of injection, resulting in a fixed amount of warming being offset, or have specified one target temperature, so that the amount of cooling is only dependent on the underlying trajectory of greenhouse gases. Here, we use three sets of SAI simulations achieving different amounts of global mean surface cooling while following a middle-of-the-road greenhouse gas emission trajectory: one SAI scenario maintains temperatures at 1.5 degrees C above preindustrial levels (PI), and two other scenarios which achieve additional cooling to 1.0 degrees C and 0.5 degrees C above PI. We demonstrate that various surface impacts scale proportionally with respect to the amount of cooling, such as global mean precipitation changes, changes to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and to the Walker Cell. We also highlight the importance of the choice of the baseline period when comparing the SAI responses to one another and to the greenhouse gas emission pathway. This analysis leads to policy-relevant discussions around the concept of a reference period altogether, and to what constitutes a relevant, or significant, change produced by SAI.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7nv9p9c

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2023-08-24T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact