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Research offers better understanding of solar geoengineering’s effect on agriculture

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Solar geoengineering may be effective in alleviating impacts of global warming on crops

New research from the Harvard John A Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) finds that solar geoengineering may be surprisingly effective in alleviating some of the worst impacts of global warming on crops.

The research, a collaboration with the Norwegian Research Centre and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Seoul National University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is published in Nature Food.

The team looked at three types of solar geoengineering- stratospheric aerosol injection, marine sky brightening, and cirrus cloud thinning- and their impact on the global yield of maize, sugarcane, wheat, rice, soy and cotton in a business-as-usual future where emissions continue at their current levels. The researchers found that all three potential solar geoengineering methods have a strong cooling effect that would benefit crop yields.

Previous research suggested that cooling temperatures brought on by stratospheric aerosol injection may also lead to less rainfall, which could result in yield loss for rainfed crops. But these studies didn’t look at one of the most important ecological factors in crop transpiration and productivity- humidity.

The researchers compared how agricultural productivity is affected by solar geoengineering and emissions reductions. The researchers found that while emissions reductions have strong cooling and humidity benefits, they may have a smaller benefit for crop yields than solar geoengineering because the reduction of CO2 fertilization reduces the productivity of most crops compared with solar geoengineering that achieves the same temperature reduction. The finding highlights the need to combine emissions reductions with other tools, including increasing the use of nitrogen fertilization and changes to land use.

 

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