References

ACPD

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions

ACPD

1680-7375

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acpd-10-7421-2010

Geoengineering by stratospheric SO2 injection: results from the Met Office HadGEM2 climate model and comparison with the Goddard Institute for Space Studies ModelE

Jones

¹ Haywood

¹ Boucher

¹ Kravitz

² Robock

Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, UK

Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

22 03 2010

10 3 7421 7434

This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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We examine the response of the Met Office Hadley Centre's HadGEM2-AO climate model to simulated geoengineering by continuous injection of SO2 into the lower stratosphere, and compare the results with those from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies ModelE. The HadGEM2 simulations suggest that the SO2 injection rate considered here (5 Tg[SO2] yr−1) could defer the amount of global warming predicted under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's A1B scenario by approximately 30–35 years, although both models indicate rapid warming if geoengineering is not sustained. We find a broadly similar geographic distribution of the response to geoengineering in both models in terms of near-surface air temperature and mean June–August precipitation. The simulations also suggest that significant changes in regional climate would be experienced even if geoengineering was successful in maintaining global-mean temperature near current values.

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