United States Attempting to Detect Other Countries Tinkering With the Climate

Is someone already secretly geoengineering the Earth?

Tracking Device

Experiments to alter the climate are starting to take place all over the world — to the degree that the United States is now building a system to detect when and where it's happening.

As the New York Times reports, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of Energy are aiming to start tracking "solar geoengineering" endeavors. There are various concepts for how that might work, but the general idea is often to use some form of chemical aerosol, injected high up into the planet's stratosphere, to reflect sunlight back away from the Earth and reduce the effects — though not the underlying cause — of climate change.

Many scientists are worried that these efforts, while well intended, could do more harm than good by causing destructive weather patterns or benefiting some countries more than others. As such, the NOAA is working to strengthen its surveillance and recognition of these projects as institutions and individual groups are increasingly undertaking pilot tests of geoengineering concepts in quests to "hack" the climate.

As a result, the agency's Chemical Sciences Laboratory has begun deploying large balloon "sentries" with equipment to detect aerosol levels in the clouds. Sent miles above the planet's surface, these balloons report back the locations and amounts of any unusual aerosol concentrations in the stratosphere so the NOAA can begin to track where geoengineering is taking place.

Eye in the Sky

While a growing number of countries have formally taken pledges not to do solar geoengineering, there are still some concerns that other nations or groups may forge ahead with the untested technology or attempt to do these sorts of projects in secret.

"If a country — a major ally, or a major opponent — is building up capabilities, can our scientists tell us what they’re trying to do, and what the impact of that would be?" asked Kelly Wanser, the founder of the nonprofit geoengineering watchdog group SilverLining, in an interview with the NYT.

Along with trying to figure out what other countries are doing, the NOAA's forthcoming aerosol tracking program could also help its scientists learn more about the longer-term effects of these projects.

As the paper notes, Laura Swiler, a senior scientist at New Mexico's Sandia National Laboratories — which works with the DOE — developed an algorithm decades ago that can retroactively tell where a burst of aerosols was released and how big it was. Though it's traditionally been used to pinpoint the origins of naturally-occurring aerosol injections, such as volcano eruptions or wildfires, her tool can also predict what effects may come of aerosols that are introduced to the atmosphere intentionally.

"The effect will possibly last months, and even maybe a couple of years, depending on how much aerosols they’re injecting," Swiler told the NYT. "Understanding what might happen two years hence — that is where we will have to rely on our modeling capabilities."

In tandem, the scientist's aerosol algorithm and the NOAA's tracking balloons should be able to help the US figure out whether and where Sun-dimming efforts are happening — and, hopefully, to begin understanding what effects they'll have.

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