Application of Tropospheric Sulfate Aerosol Emissions to Mitigate Meteorological Phenomena with Extremely High Daily Temperatures

Abstract

This research examined whether tropospheric sulfate ion aerosols (SO4 2-) might be applied at a regional scale to mitigate meteorological phenomena with extremely high daily temperatures. The specific objectives of this work were: 1) to model the behaviour of SO4 2aerosols in the troposphere and their influence on surface temperature and incident solar radiation, at a regional scale, using an appropriate online coupled mesoscale meteorology and chemistry model; 2) to determine the main engineering design parameters using tropospheric SO4 2aerosols in order to artificially reduce the temperature and incoming radiation at surface during events of extremely high daily temperatures, and 3) to evaluate a preliminary technical proposal for the injection of regionally engineered tropospheric SO4 2aerosols based on the integral anti-hail system of the Province of Mendoza. In order to accomplish these objectives, we used the Weather Research & Forecasting Model coupled with Chemistry (WRF/Chem) to model and evaluate the behaviour of tropospheric SO4 2over the Province of Mendoza (Argentina) (PMA) on a clear sky day during a heat wave event occurred in January 2012. In addition, using WRF/Chem, we evaluated the potential reductions on surface temperature and incident shortwave radiation around the metropolitan area of Great Mendoza, PMA, based on an artificially designed aerosol layer and on observed meteorological parameters. The results demonstrated the ability of WRF/Chem to represent the behaviour of tropospheric SO4 2aerosols at a regional scale and suggested that the inclusion of these aerosols in the atmosphere causes changes in the surface energy balance and, therefore, in the surface temperature and the regional atmospheric circulation. However, it became evident that, given the high rate of injection and the large amount of mass required for its practical implementation by means of the technology currently used by the anti-hail program, it is inefficient and energetically costly.

Sixty Years of Hail Suppression Activities in Mendoza, Argentina: Uncertainties, Gaps in Knowledge and Future Perspectives

“…Soviet rockets were used during the period 1985-1991, guided by two Weather Modification Inc. (WMI) C-band and two MRL-5 S-band meteorological radars installed in the three agricultural oases of Mendoza to support the hail suppression activities (de la Torre et al, 2004). After 1998, aircraft were incorporated to the project, using two types of explosives (cartridges and flares) for cloud seeding (Mulena et al, 2019). Economic difficulties led to changes in the control of the hail suppressing projects, alternating from governmental to private sectors from 1993 to 2004 with some interruptions.…”

“…Most of the research was developed by institutions based in countries from North America, Europe, and Asia. Just two published papers were found from Argentinean institutions (de la Torre et al, 2004;Mulena et al, 2019), presenting results non-related to the hail suppressing activities in Mendoza province. Nevertheless, we must consider that some papers analyzing data from Mendoza were published under Russian and Spanish institutions, as well as private international organizations like WMI.…”

An uncertainty for clean air: Air quality modeling implications of underestimating VOC emissions in urban inventories

“…Latin-American studies using the chemical mechanism RADM2 (Stockwell et al, 1990) 136 63 (Moya Álvarez et al, 2017;Mulena et al, 2019;Navarro-Barboza et al, 2020;Rafee et al, 2017;Vara-Vela et al, 2016) RACM (Stockwell et al, 1997) 237 77 (Bela et al, 2015;Cuchiara et al, 2017;Mena-Carrasco et al, 2012) CMBZ (Zaveri, 1999) 132 52…”

An assessment of the infrastructural and temporal barriers constraining a near-term implementation of a global stratospheric aerosol injection program

“…Several recent papers have described deployments at high latitudes to restrain tipping elements or ice loss at the poles (Lee et al 2021, Smith et al 2022b, Xie et al 2022, Duffey et al 2023, Goddard et al 2023, Sutter et al 2023. Others have considered regional interventions at lower altitudes intended to manage heat waves rather than average annual temperatures (Bernstein et al 2013, Mulena et al 2019, Zhao et al 2019. Small-scale (Golja et al 2021) or largescale/short-duration tests (Dykema et al 2014) might be undertaken to clarify the scientific processes and engineering requirements of subsequent larger/longer deployments.…”