Impacts of geoengineering on regional terrestrial carbon cycles
Injecting sulfur dioxide into the lower stratosphere as part of the stratospheric aerosol intervention (SAI) is considered to stabilize surface temperature, without actually cutting emissions, and mitigate the strengthening of extreme events and wildfires caused by anthropogenic climate change. However, there are significant uncertainties regarding the effects of SAI on terrestrial and marine ecosystems, especially at regional scales. Due to potentially unpredictable changes in the earth’s environment from SAI, sophisticated earth system models are practicable to quantify the effects of SAI on regional carbon cycles and various socioeconomic sectors such as agriculture. In this study, we conducted simulations of the ScenarioMIP SSP5-8.5, SSP5-3.4-Overshoot (OS) scenarios and their peak-shaving scenarios using the DOE Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) v3 coupled with a comprehensive chemistry mechanism and a prognostic aerosol models from the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) v6. The peak-shaving scenarios involved implementing SAI in the SSP5-8.5 and SSP5-3.4-OS scenarios to limit the global mean surface air temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. We also compared our simulations with those of CESM2-WACCM6. Our results showed that SAI significantly affected the carbon cycle and sink strength at regional scales and across different socioeconomic sectors. These regional contrasts were primarily due to the inhomogeneous and nonlinear impacts of SAI on regional temperature and precipitation. Our results highlight the need for studies of SAI injection schemes to account for the impacts on the regional carbon cycle.