Can Global Warming Be Solved By Artificially Cooling the Earth?

Have you ever heard energy reflection? Well, that might be a way to solve global warming. The Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit that advocates for environmental protection, will be researching tools that are able to artificially cool the Earth. But what exactly is artificial cooling?

Scientists believe that reflecting the sun’s energy away from the Earth can shade the Earth from the sun’s heat. This is similar to when a volcano erupts- the ash blasted into the atmosphere reflects solar radiation into space, which then fundamentally cools the planet temporarily.

To replicate this, engineers have come up with ideas of sending reflective aerosols into the stratosphere. Though this seems like an effective way to block out the heat of the sun, this could cause many side effects on the climate. For example, cyclones and hurricanes would increase, causing for more natural disasters, as well as less-powerful winter storms, which affects the wind speed. With weak wind speed, it is harder for air pollution to clear away.

Another method scientists are trying to use to cool the Earth is “cooling glass”. Cooling glass would be made up of glass and aluminum oxide particles. The Earth cools itself by essentially shedding its heat into space, and the cooling glass would speed up this process by reflecting the sunlight through the “window” of the glass. This would happen because the window would be in range of the electromagnetic spectrum that is able to go through the Earth’s atmosphere without any temperature increase.

With global warming becoming more and more of a threat every day, scientists are determined to find a solution. Though there are a lot of practical ways to solve global warming, they can also cause lots of other issues for the climate.

Sources:

Environmental Group to Study Effects of Artificially Cooling Earth

Study: Reflecting sunlight to cool the planet will cause other global changes

‘Cooling Glass’ could fight climate change by reflecting solar radiation back into space