HR: 10:20h
AN: GC52A-01    [Abstracts]
TI: "On the Possibilities of Climate Control" in 1962: Harry Wexler on Geoengineering and Ozone Destruction
AU: * Fleming, J R
EM: jfleming@colby.edu
AF: Colby College, Science, Technology and Society Prog. 5881 Mayflower Hill, Waterville, ME 04901, United States
AB: In 1962, in the early days of GCMs and satellites, Harry Wexler, Chief of the Scientific Services Division of the U.S. Weather Bureau and one of the most influential meteorologists of the 20th century, turned his attention to techniques that could raise or lower the overall temperature of the planet or rearrange its thermal structure. He also investigated possible inadvertent and purposeful damage to the ozone layer involving catalytic reactions of chorine and bromine. This work pre-dated the Nobel Prize-winning work on ozone depletion of P. Crutzen, M. Molina, and S. Rowland by about a decade. Wexler revealed his concerns about geoengineering and ozone destruction in a series of lectures "On the Possibilities of Climate Control" presented to technical audiences in Boston, Hartford, and Los Angeles in 1962. Using newly available results from GCMs and satellite heat budget experiments, Wexler pointed out that strategic manipulations of the Earth's shortwave and longwave radiation budgets could result in rather large-scale effects on general circulation patterns in short or longer periods, even approaching that of climatic change. These techniques, included increasing world temperature by several degrees by detonating up to ten H-bombs in the Arctic Ocean; decreasing world temperature by launching powder into an equatorial orbit to shade the Earth and make it look somewhat like Saturn and its rings; warming the lower atmosphere and cooling the stratosphere by artificial injections of water vapor or other substances; and notably, destroying all stratospheric ozone above the Arctic circle or near the equator using a relatively small amount of a catalytic agent such as chlorine or bromine. Wexler was preparing a new lecture in the summer of 1962 on "The Climate of Earth and Its Modifications," and might, under normal circumstances, have prepared his ideas for publication, as he had done earlier. However, he was cut down in his prime by a sudden heart attack on August 11, 1962. His previously unexamined notes and papers on climate control and ozone destruction are located in the Library of Congress.
UR: http://www.colby.edu/sts/wexlerozone.pdf
DE: 1610 Atmosphere (0315, 0325)
DE: 1626 Global climate models (3337, 4928)
DE: 1700 HISTORY OF GEOPHYSICS
DE: 6620 Science policy (0485)
SC: Global Environmental Change [GC]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting