Pinatubo lessons for geoengineering
15 February 2015 Last updated at 03:44 GMT
Scientists who study ideas to engineer the climate to mitigate global warming say we should be ready to deploy an armada of instrumentation when Earth has its next major volcanic eruption.
Data gathered in the high atmosphere would be invaluable in determining whether so-called "geoengineering" solutions had any merit at all.
It would have to be an event on the scale of Mount Pinatubo in 1991.
Prof Alan Robock from Rutgers University told our correspondent Jonathan Amos how such an eruption would aid understanding.
www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31476393'Next Pinatubo' a test of geoengineering
Published on 14 Feb 2015
Scientists who study ideas to engineer the climate to mitigate global warming say we should be ready to deploy an armada of instrumentation when Earth has its next major volcanic eruption.
Data gathered in the high atmosphere would be invaluable in determining whether so-called "geoengineering" solutions had any merit at all.
It would have to be an event on the scale of Mount Pinatubo in 1991.
That eruption cooled global temperatures for a couple of years.
It did so by pumping 20 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide high into the sky above the Philippines.
The resulting droplets of sulphuric acid that formed on contact with moisture reflected incoming sunlight back out into space, preventing that radiation from warming the surface.
Some have suggested humanity could mimic this same effect by deliberately seeding the stratosphere with sulphur.
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