Can geoengineering blunt El Niño's fury?
A study suggests solar geoengineering could reduce the severity of extreme El Niño events caused by climate change, but the approach carries significant risks and is not a substitute for cutting emissions.
Background
- El Niño and its counterpart La Niña are natural climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean that alter weather worldwide; El Niño brings heat and extreme rain to some regions, drought to others.
- "Geoengineering" here refers to solar radiation management — specifically, injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect a small fraction of sunlight and cool the planet, mimicking the effect of a major volcanic eruption.
- The article discusses new modeling research exploring whether this technique could dampen the worst impacts of El Niño events, which are expected to intensify as the planet warms.
- Stratospheric aerosol injection is highly controversial: it is untested at scale, raises fears of side effects (e.g., ozone damage, disrupted monsoons), and poses governance challenges because one country could theoretically alter the global climate unilaterally.
- This line of research is often called "solar geoengineering" and is distinct from carbon dioxide removal — it addresses symptoms of warming, not the cause.