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Le Monde
Le Monde
31 Aug 2024


Images Le Monde.fr

This summer, with its particularly dry weather and temperatures nudging 46°C, California was once again in the grip of megafires. As the effects of global warming continue to take hold, the situation will only worsen unless something is done. For some years now, experts have experimented with climate engineering technologies that could artificially modify the weather. They include marine cloud brightening, a technique that recently hit the headlines in California where a test of this type was called into question.

Clouds are made up of countless particles and droplets, and the smaller and more numerous they are, the more they reflect, mirror-like, the sun's rays back into space.

Some scientists maintain that marine salt aerosols should be injected into certain types of cloud to lower ocean temperatures, which could help mitigate the consequences of global warming. The process should not be confused with cloud seeding – a technique that produces rain-like precipitation – which has been used for decades in the US and China.

A study undertaken by researchers at the University of California in San Diego and published in the June issue of the Nature Climate Change journal finds that in the long term, deploying such technology on the US West Coast could produce unwanted collateral effects within the targeted region and beyond. The study finds that in 2050, it would lose Its efficacity locally and could aggravate heatwaves elsewhere in the world, including Europe, as it would disrupt the circulation of the North Atlantic ocean currents, which help regulate the climate.

"By means of climate modeling and taking the US West Coast as an exemplar, we simulated cooling induced by marine cloud brightening," said Katharine Ricke, a climatologist and coauthor of the study. "Under present-day climate conditions, the technique for cooling the temperature of the area works." The study models a potential 55% reduction in the risk of dangerous heat in the North Pacific (near Alaska) and 16% if the measure were implemented in southern California, and which would not adversely impact other geographical areas.

But taking into account climatic conditions in 2050, the technology's efficacity becomes "almost nil" in the target zones and could increase heat stress elsewhere. The authors emphasize the risks of assuming that certain interventions that prove effective in some conditions will remain so as the climate continues to change.

The study demonstrates that marine cloud brightening can benefit one region but harm others, notably by "exacerbating heat stress and altering precipitation responses," said James Kerry, a marine and climate researcher at James Cook University in Australia, who was not a co-author.

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