Spice up your life!

CASE STUDY ALERT!

We have previously discussed the proposal of sulfate aerosol injection into Earth's atmosphere to mitigate incoming solar radiation, so a real time attempt to engineer this begs a mention.

Which case study is this?

The SPICE Project.

This must be the one of the most famously known geoengineering projects yet. The Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering project (SPICE project) was proposed in 2010, and is a technological means of pumping sulfate particles into the atmosphere to reflect incoming solar radiation away from the Earth's surface. The project is a collaboration between the University of Bristol, Edinburgh and Oxford co-funded by EPSRC, NERC, and STFC (SPICE, 2014). It consists of a large tethered weather balloon (the size of Wembley stadium!) attached to a 1 kilometre long pipe from a ship (Hale, 2012).

Source: The Guardian

It looks pretty simple- almost a replica of a WW1 Zeppelin.

Source: The Conversation

However, what is exceptional about the SPICE project is that it managed to surpass laboratory based modelling stages and became a field experiment in the real world, unique progress within solar radiation management. In fact it was even backed financially by the government with £1.6 million invested (Vidal, 2011). The project was tested on a small scale, and 150 litres of water were pumped into the atmosphere. The water was a proxy for the real project which would pump sulfate aerosol particles into the atmosphere, to estimate the feasibility of engineering the project on a larger magnitude (Vidal, 2011).

So why was it cancelled?

Cancellation of the project occurred in June 2012, and it was a result of social and commercial concern as opposed to a major failures of the SPICE project. The initial prolonged hesitation of two scientists working on the SPICE project to hand over patents of similar previously used technology to the SPICE project cause alarming concern within the scientific community, and progress resorted to laboratory research once more (Pidgeon et al. 2013).

Despite this, the project was already subject to great public concern about the unprecedented large scale uncertainty that the project could ensue, and the fear that geoengineering attempts were replacing carbon emission mitigation strategies, which are more optimal to recover our climate situation. Solar geoengineering methods do not tackle the increasing atmospheric carbon emissions which are the source of global warming issues and concerns. Similarly the high risks associated with sulfur aerosol emissions as discussed in the previous blog have prevented any such scheme from taking off! There were concerns of technological issues too such as the hose breaking away, or constant maintenance requirements.


S xx

P.S. There was a great UCL lunchtime lecture regarding geoengineering and it has a mention of the SPICE project. Here is a link below:

'Should we experiment with Climate?'