Welcome to this edition of Over a Cup of Coffee!

In this newsletter

• Cooling California could heat up Europe

• Earth temperatures could rise by 14 degrees!!!

• Scientists pray for hurricanes to save coral reef

Cooling California could heat up Europe

With temperatures soaring on the US west coast, calls for a geoengineering intervention are also on the rise.

Geoengineering is the name given to any approach to mitigate the impact of climate change. This can be done at a local, regional, or even national level to improve the climate conditions in the region.

Australia has been experimenting with a technique called marine cloud brightening for over four years now to cool down the Great Barrier Reef. In this approach, reflective aerosols are sprayed over clouds over the ocean so that sunlight is reflected back to space.

But what would such an intervention's impact be if it was attempted over California? Researchers at the University of California San Diego wanted to find out.

The researchers used climate models for the years 2010 and 2050 to determine the impact of cloud brightening attempts to reduce temperatures over the US west coast.

Since the world's climate is interconnected, the researchers expected far-reaching impacts of the intervention. However, what they found out through their study surprised them beyond belief.

According to the 2010 Earth climate models, geoengineering would reduce heat over the US West Coast by 55 percent and help cool Europe a bit.

However, by 2050, the climate would be further disrupted and attempts to cool down the US west coast would actually increase temperatures all over the world, especially Europe due to Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc).

The cause for worry for scientists, however, is that currently there are no global regulations on using geoengineering. So, not just a state or a community, but even a billionaire looking to cool down the climate of his private island can run these interventions, which can have far reaching effects.

The study was published in Nature Climate Change.

Earth temperatures could rise by 14 degrees!!!

The UN climate panel has warned that the planet could see a temperature rise of up to 4.5 degrees if the carbon emissions are not checked. However, researchers at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research have found that our planet could end up warming up by a whopping 14 degrees if CO2 levels continue to rise.

This isn’t a modeling prediction but a reality check from the past when CO2 levels were high on Earth.

The researchers drilled into the Pacific Ocean to sample species as far back as 18 million years and check their CO2 levels. The team was keen on two substances in these organisms, chlorophyll and cholesterol, which both depend on the absorption of CO2 from the air.

Researchers can determine the CO2 levels in the atmosphere by calculating the levels of carbon isotopes in these chemicals. The team found that 15 million years ago, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere were as high as 650 parts per million.

At these levels, the average global temperature reached 18 degrees, four degrees more than it is today. The UN Climate Panel expects these levels to be the worst-case scenario by 2100 but is projecting only a small increase in global temperatures.

The current CO2 levels are at 412 parts per million, and we need strong measures to reign it in and reverse it or risk a sharp rise in global temperatures.

The research findings were published in were published in Nature 

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Scientists pray for hurricanes to save coral reef

The high temperatures this summer are not just on land but are affecting oceans too. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 72 percent of the world’s reef areas are experiencing heat stress, surpassing affected areas between 2014-2017.

Reefs in the Atlantic Ocean have been hit the hardest. They shed their algae when the water is too hot for too long, a process called bleaching. The algae provide both color and food to the reef, so if the water does not cool down quickly enough, the reef starves and dies.

Luckily, the ocean heat that causes bleaching is also responsible for an active hurricane season. Hurricanes are like giant heat vacuums, taking in the ocean heat to grow and cooling the ocean in return.

The area that the hurricane cools can extend up to 400 miles (~650 km) from the hurricane’s center. Category 1 and 2 hurricanes were previously enough to reverse coral bleaching.

But the temperatures have risen so much that scientists are hoping for stronger hurricanes. Too strong a hurricane can have the opposite effect as well, exposing corals to water contaminated with fertilizers and sewage from flooded land.

Coral reef recovery can take years, but this is becoming more unpredictable in the warmer world.

You can read more about this in this CNN report.

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Until next time,
Ameya