HR: 11:40h
AN: GC52A-09 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: Lowering Global Temperature by Enhancing the Natural Sulfur Cycle
AU: * Wingenter, O W
EM: oliver@nmt.edu
AF: Department of Chemistry, New Mexico Tech, Socorro, NM 87801, United States
AU: * Wingenter, O W
EM: oliver@nmt.edu
AF: Geophysical Research Center, New Mexico Tech, Socorro, NM 87801,
AU: Elliot, S M
EM: sme@lanl.gov
AF: Climate Ocean Sea Ice Modeling Project, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, United States
AU: Blake, D R
EM: DRBlake@uci.edu
AF: Department of Chemistry, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, United States
AB: We describe a well leveraged approach to partially regulate climate using limited iron enhancement to stimulate the natural sulfur cycle resulting in increased cloud reflectivity that could cool large regions of our planet. Our plan differs greatly in size and intended outcome from full scale ocean iron fertilization of the Southern Ocean (SO) as proposed previously to help mitigate rising CO2 in the atmosphere. Some regions of the Earth's oceans are high in nutrients but low in primary productivity. The largest such region is the SO followed by the equatorial Pacific. Several mesoscale (100 km2) experiments have shown that the limiting nutrient to productivity is iron. Yet, the effectiveness of iron fertilization for sequestering significant amounts of atmospheric CO2 is still in question. However, marine microorganisms not only consume inorganic carbon but also produce and consume many climate relevant organic gases. The greatest climate effect of iron fertilization may be in enhancing dimethyl sulfide (DMS) production, leading to changes in the optical properties of the atmosphere and cooling of the region. It appears that that full scale fertilization of the SO is not a viable solution because it would lead to over cooling of the region. Furthermore, our initial proposal differs from other solar shading plans as primary productivity may actually increase somewhat despite the slight loss in sunlight.
DE: 0315 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions (0426, 1610)
DE: 0414 Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling (0412, 0793, 1615, 4805, 4912)
DE: 1065 Major and trace element geochemistry
DE: 1605 Abrupt/rapid climate change (4901, 8408)
DE: 1622 Earth system modeling (1225)
SC: Global Environmental Change [GC]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting