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Abstract

Greenhouse gas emissions urgently need to be reduced. Even with a step up in mitigation, the goal of limiting global temperature rise to well below 2 °C remains challenging. Consequences of missing these goals are substantial, especially on regional scales. Because progress in the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions has been slow, climate engineering schemes are increasingly being discussed. But global schemes remain controversial and have important shortcomings. A reduction of global mean temperature through global-scale management of solar radiation could lead to strong regional disparities and affect rainfall patterns. On the other hand, active management of land radiative effects on a regional scale represents an alternative option of climate engineering that has been little discussed. Regional land radiative management could help to counteract warming, in particular hot extremes in densely populated and important agricultural regions. Regional land radiative management also raises some ethical issues, and its efficacy would be limited in time and space, depending on crop growing periods and constraints on agricultural management. But through its more regional focus and reliance on tested techniques, regional land radiative management avoids some of the main shortcomings associated with global radiation management. We argue that albedo-related climate benefits of land management should be considered more prominently when assessing regional-scale climate adaptation and mitigation as well as ecosystem services.

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Seneviratne, SI and Phipps, SJ and Pitman, AJ and Hirsch, AL and Davin, EL and Donat, MG and Hirschi, M and Lenton, AA and Wilhelm, M and Kravitz, B
Keywords:	climate change, geoengineering, climate adaptation, climate mitigation, land radiative management
Journal or Publication Title:	Nature Geoscience
Publisher:	Nature Publishing Group
ISSN:	1752-0894
DOI / ID Number:	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-017-0057-5
Copyright Information:	© 2018 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved.
Related URLs:	Google Scholar: Phipps, SJ
Item Statistics:	View statistics for this item

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