Brigham-Grette, DeConto Among International Team Warning of Risks of Polar Geoengineering to Slow Climate Change
Two of the world’s most eminent polar scientists, the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Julie Brigham-Grette and Rob DeConto, both from the Department of Earth, Geographic and Climate Sciences, are co-authors of a major new assessment into the risks of geoengineering the planet in order to slow climate change published recently in Safeguarding the Polar Regions from Dangerous Geoengineering: A Critical Assessment of Current Projects and Future Prospects.
The burning of fossil fuels continues to warm our planet. As climate change intensifies, Antarctica and the Arctic—the vulnerable regions at Earth’s poles—are heating significantly faster than the global average.
Warming at the poles has severe impacts both locally and globally. It is already affecting fragile local communities and ecosystems through the loss of sea ice, glaciers and ice shelves. The melting of sea ice, which reflects the summer sun’s radiation back into space, allows the ocean to absorb more heat, amplifying global warming. Melting of land ice also contributes to accelerating global sea-level rise.
However given the slow pace of decarbonization and the importance of the polar regions for climate health, some scientists and engineers have proposed technological interventions, known as geoengineering, to mitigate the warming’s impact.
Many of the geoengineering ideas would have negative, unintended consequences that could cause widespread environmental damage and threaten food supplies.
Julie Brigham-Grette, professor of Earth, Geographic and Climate Sciences at UMass Amherst
Brigham-Grette and DeConto are among 42 co-authors of the new research, which assesses five of the most developed geoengineering ideas currently being considered for deployment in Antarctica and the Arctic.
“Many of the geoengineering ideas would have negative, unintended consequences that could cause widespread environmental damage and threaten food supplies,” says Brigham-Grette. “Most would do nothing to curb the so-called ‘other CO2 problem,’ which is ocean acidification that threatens the base of most food chains.”
The paper’s authors conclude that polar geoengineering is not workable, would lead to additional environmental problems, would be prohibitively expensive and would struggle to achieve international agreement. They also offer a word of caution that, to those preferring to continue burning fossil fuels, geoengineering may offer the appealing pretense of a climate solution.
These geoengineering proposals are not only unimaginably expensive and risky for fragile polar environments, they also detract attention from the root cause of the climate crisis – the unabated burning of fossil fuel.
Rob DeConto, professor of Earth, Geographic and Climate Sciences at UMass Amherst
“These geoengineering proposals are not only unimaginably expensive and risky for fragile polar environments,” says DeConto, who also directs UMass Amherst’s School of Earth & Sustainability, “they also detract attention from the root cause of the climate crisiss – the unabated burning of fossil fuel… something we know how to begin addressing using proven technologies. Counting on these geoengineering concepts to save the day is both dangerous and unrealistic.”
UMass Amherst has been at the forefront of climate sciences for more than three decades. Michael Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph, showing the explosion of greenhouse gas emissions beginning with the Industrial Revolution, was created here. UMass Amherst is home to the international office of the Climate and Cryosphere (CliC) project, a core initiative of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP). And the university’s experts—particularly in the frozen parts of the globe—are internationally recognized as leaders in their fields.