As the UK endures an unprecedented fifth heatwave, following swiftly on from the driest July ever recorded, it feels like rising temperatures, water restrictions and risk of wildfires are set to become the norm rather than rare exceptions. Climate anxiety is hard to avoid this summer.
The more optimistic news is that around the globe, a number of scientists have been developing radical new technologies that could help address varying aspects of the climate crisis. Some experimental trials are already underway and over the next two decades, they could represent our best chance of preventing some of the worst consequences of our warming world.
Here, scientists describe four revolutionary ideas currently being explored.
Reflecting sunlight
Earlier this year, a startling new report from the Climate Change Committee predicted that heatwaves are predicted to exceed 40°C in all parts of the UK by 2050, with longer spells of hot weather resulting in 10,000 additional heat-related deaths per year.
One way of cooling the planet is to find additional ways of reflecting the sun’s rays back into space. Some scientists have suggested using planes to release tiny sulfur particles high into the atmosphere, an idea partially inspired by historic volcanic eruptions. The 1991 explosion of Mount Pinatubo ejected up to 20 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. These gases reacted with water vapour to form tiny droplets of sulfuric acid, which acted as microscopic mirrors.
“The presence of those droplets cooled the Earth by an estimated half a degree celsius [in the early 1990s] over the course of one to three years,” says Shaun Fitzgerald, professor and director of the Centre for Climate Repair at the University of Cambridge.
Another idea is to generate brighter and more reflective clouds. This could be done by using boats mounted with powerful cannons to send a thousand trillion droplets of seawater per second into the atmosphere where they mingle with low-lying clouds. This is based on research showing that the more water droplets present within a cloud, the more capable it is of reflecting sunlight.
Not everyone is convinced, however, and concerns have been raised that artificially blocking sunlight could have unintended impacts such as altering patterns of rainfall or impacting food production.
But with the warming planet facing unprecedented wildfires and rising heat-related deaths, David Keith, professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, argues that the idea warrants genuine consideration. “I think that it could reduce most aspects of climate change in most places, and that the risks and side effects, while real, are relatively small compared to the benefits,” he says.
Preventing droughts with next generation desalination
With more than two-thirds of the UK currently in drought, water supply has emerged as a very real problem. Government forecasts suggest that the country’s water requirements will outstrip the available supply from rainfall over the next quarter of a century.
A desalination plant in Saudi Arabia (Photo: Fayez Nureldine/AFP via Getty)While desalination – turning salty seawater into a drinkable form – is already carried out on a large scale across the Middle East as well as in Jersey and the Isles of Scilly, it is also highly controversial. Conventional methods, which involve the use of high-pressure pumps to force seawater through specialised plastic filters or membranes, are both expensive and energy intensive. They also result in large amounts of toxic brine being released back into the sea, raising salinity levels and harming marine life.
However, the University of Manchester is leading a push to develop cheaper, less hazardous and more efficient desalination using graphene, the world’s thinnest material.
Measuring just one atom thick, graphene-based desalination membranes could filter seawater with minimal resistance, reducing the amount of energy required, while simultaneously trapping salt particles.
“Graphene could be more economical and energy efficient, and have better salt removal capabilities,” says Rahul Nair, professor of materials physics at the University of Manchester. “There’s also interest in recovering and reusing some of the minerals from the brine, so the environmental impact [of desalination] can be reduced.”
Regenerating Arctic Ocean ice
The progressive melting of the Arctic Ocean ice could have far-reaching impacts on the global climate. This is because polar ice reflects 70 per cent of the sun’s heat, while also acting as an insulator between the cold air and the relatively warm Arctic Ocean.
If the Arctic ice disappears completely, the resulting heat boost could be catastrophic. Climate modelling has also suggested that it could provoke more intense storms and unpredictable weather patterns.
To prevent this, Fitzgerald and his colleagues have received £10m of funding from the UK Government’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria), to investigate ways of restoring the density of the Arctic ice during winter months. One idea is to drill holes in the existing ice sheet and pump tens of thousands of tonnes of seawater onto the surface, where it freezes almost immediately. This concept was originally used by the oil industry on a much smaller scale to create ice sheets capable of supporting large trucks carrying heavy drilling equipment.
“If we could do that on a much larger scale to rethicken the Arctic sea ice and have it back to where it was 20-30 years ago, our estimates are that it could reduce average global temperatures by a tenth of a degree Celsius,” Fitzgerald says.
Real Ice, a specialised field team funded by Aria, are currently carrying out pioneering experiments in northern Canada. So far, this has led to some optimistic findings such as the suggestion that artificially thickened ice is brighter than the original ice sheet, potentially making it better at reflecting solar radiation.
‘One idea is to drill holes in the existing ice sheet and pump tens of thousands of tonnes of seawater onto the surface, where it freezes almost immediately’ (Photo: Elise Imbeau)Modifying ocean currents with giant parachutes in the sea
The UK owes its temperate climate to the Gulf Stream, a powerful ocean current which flows from the Gulf of Mexico to Northwest Europe as part of a wider conveyor belt of currents known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc).
However, there are signs that the Gulf Stream is slowing down. If it collapses entirely, much of Europe could descend into a new Ice Age. “The UK and other countries would get colder because the warmth isn’t coming up from the tropical ocean,” says Stuart Haszeldine, a professor at the University of Edinburgh’s Climate Change Institute.
To prevent this, Haszeldine’s suggestion is to artificially reinforce the Gulf Stream with the help of giant parachutes – the size of half a football pitch – pulled by as many as 1000 tugboats, as a way of dragging warm water across the Atlantic.
He proposes small test experiments, beginning in a laboratory wave tank with model boats, followed by a real-world trial in a freshwater reservoir as a way of quantifying the exact number of boats and the size of the parachutes required to make this happen.
“You’d need to do an initial trial for several years, and if all goes well, then several countries would need to get together and build a fleet of boats to do the real manipulation of the ocean current,” he says.
As with the other grand ideas, the idea may seem slightly outlandish. But given the rapidly accelerating scale of the climate urgency, Haszeldine is calling for politicians to unlock more funding to facilitate broader testing of some of these potentially game-changing innovations.
“All these interventions are remarkably low cost compared to the implications of doing nothing,” he says. “This is all extremely feasible, extremely tractable in terms of the technology, industry and money, which is available in the world.”
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