Impacts of Climate Intervention on Sulfur Deposition with CMIP6 Model Outputs
Anthropogenic climate change is today’s most pressing global challenge. The widespread harmful impacts to humans and ecosystems are being felt worldwide and current pledges to reduce emissions are not adequate to even maintain warming at 2 degrees C above historical temperatures. In addition to reducing emissions and adapting to a warmer climate, climate intervention may be needed to slow warming. Decreasing radiative forcing does not address the fundamental issue of too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but it would give the world more time to reduce and stabilize emissions. One method of altering the atmosphere’s radiative budget is stratospheric aerosol injection. However, when sulfur dioxide is injected into the lower stratosphere, some of it will be deposited back onto land and marine environments. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the spatial and temporal patterns of sulfur deposition and its potential impacts on human and ecosystem health. This study analyzes deposition-related variables from Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP) model outputs and from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) 245 and SSP585 model outputs to demonstrate how deposition and adverse impacts will change under different future climate scenarios.