The idea behind the marine cloud-brightening (MCB) geoengineering technique is that seeding marine stratocumulus clouds with copious quantities of roughly monodisperse sub-micrometre sea water particles might significantly enhance the cloud droplet number concentration, and thereby the cloud albedo and possibly longevity. This would produce a cooling, which general circulation model (GCM) computations suggest could—subject to satisfactory resolution of technical and scientific problems identified herein—have the capacity to balance global warming up to the carbon dioxide-doubling point. We describe herein an account of our recent research on a number of critical issues associated with MCB. This involves (i) GCM studies, which are our primary tools for evaluating globally the effectiveness of MCB, and assessing its climate impacts on rainfall amounts and distribution, and also polar sea-ice cover and thickness; (ii) high-resolution modelling of the effects of seeding on marine stratocumulus, which are required to understand the complex array of interacting processes involved in cloud brightening; (iii) microphysical modelling sensitivity studies, examining the influence of seeding amount, seed-particle salt-mass, air-mass characteristics, updraught speed and other parameters on cloud–albedo change; (iv) sea water spray-production techniques; (v) computational fluid dynamics studies of possible large-scale periodicities in Flettner rotors; and (vi) the planning of a three-stage limited-area field research experiment, with the primary objectives of technology testing and determining to what extent, if any, cloud albedo might be enhanced by seeding marine stratocumulus clouds on a spatial scale of around 100×100 km. We stress that there would be no justification for deployment of MCB unless it was clearly established that no significant adverse consequences would result. There would also need to be an international agreement firmly in favour of such action.

The large-scale production of vast numbers of suitable salt nuclei and their upward launch is one of the main technological barriers to the experimental testing of marine cloud brightening (MCB). Very promising, though not definitive, results have been obtained using an adapted version of effervescent spray atomization. The process is simple, robust and inexpensive. This form of effervescent spraying uses only pressurized water and air sprayed from small nozzles to obtain very fine distributions. While it is far from optimized, and may not be the best method if full deployment is ever desired, we believe that even in its present form the process would lend itself well to preliminary field test investigations of MCB. Measurements obtained using standard aerosol instrumentation show approximately lognormal distributions of salt nuclei with median diameters of approximately 65 nm and geometric standard deviations slightly less than 2. However, these measurements are not in agreement with those based on scanning electron microscopy imaging of collected particles, an observation that has not yet been explained. Assuming the above distribution, 1015 particles per second could be made with 21 kW of spray power, using approximately 200 nozzles. It is envisioned that existing snow making equipment can be adapted to launch the nuclei 60–100 m into the air, requiring approximately 20 kW of additional power.

Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB), should it ever need to be deployed, envisions the formation of 10 17 salt Cloud Condensation Nuclei (CCN) per second coming from each of several thousand vessels deployed worldwide. The creation of this many nuclei on such a vast scale, from micron-or submicron-sized seawater droplets, preferably mono-disperse, poses a considerable engineering challenge. Various existing or experimental spray methods were investigated for feasibility, resulting in the identification of a few with promising results. Electro-spraying from Taylor cone-jets, using either silicon micromachined long capillaries or short capillary polymer substrates attached to a porous substrate, appears to have the best potential for implementation of all the methods that have been investigated so far.

We review in some detail research into experimental spray methods for the production of salt nanoparticles from seawater, which would be needed for the implementation of Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB), a possible climate change mitigation method.We describe first an electrospray method employing Taylor cones spraying seawater, which fortuitously has the right conductivity to produce salt particles in the desired size range (40-100 nm equiv. sphere diameter). A second method involves spraying supercritical salt solutions to get particles in the same size range, as the absence of surface tension yields sprays that are extremely fine. Finally, we describe briefly our ongoing efforts to use effervescent sprays at very high pressure to obtain the desired particle size distribution (PSD).

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