Harvard scientists will soon send chemicals into the atmosphere to see if a last-ditch planet-hacking plan could keep Earth habitable

To reverse rising temperatures and prevent catastrophic climate change, some scientists are turning to solar geoengineering, or the modification of Earth's atmosphere using tools like reflective aerosols, mirrors in the atmosphere, and controlled cloud formations.

A team of scientists at Harvard University is on track to become the first to test geoengineering methods outside the laboratory. As early as spring 2019, the team will launch an outdoor sky-modifying experiment in the United States, spraying particles into a small part of the sky to help reflect some of the sun's rays back into space.

Their project, the $3 million Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), will send two balloons into the stratosphere, which stretches from 6 to 31 miles above Earth's surface. The first balloons will be filled with ice to make sure the instruments work properly. Later ones will include calcium carbonate.

SCoPEx aims to determine how these chemicals interact with the stratosphere and whether they can help lower temperatures on Earth.

In a report released in October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the world will be hit by some of the most severe effects of climate change after temperature levels exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

While stopping this is still possible, it would require a coordinated shift in the global economic system, which is unlikely. Humans would have to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 45% in the next 12 years, ultimately reaching zero emissions by 2050.

Without a major change in the economic system, only a new approach could stop catastrophic climate change, and the Harvard scientists believe solar geoengineering could get us there.

The proposed geoengineering solution has already been observed in nature. According to Nature magazine, the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines released about 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. The planet's temperature went down about 0.5 degrees Celsius after the eruption, and for 1.5 years, Earth went back to temperature levels seen before the steam engine was invented.

Harvard's scientists have chosen calcium carbonate because they expect it to heat up less than sulfate and have less of an impact on ozone, according to Nature.

Opponents of the method say solar geoengineering could harm the ozone layer and one day lead to military use of weather-altering technology.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, Chair Hoesung Lee, center, speaks during a press conference in Incheon, South Korea, on October 8, 2018. Preventing an extra single degree of heat could make a life-or-death difference in the next few decades for multitudes of people and ecosystems on this fast-warming planet, an international panel of scientists said. BusinessInsider

In late November, researchers at Harvard and Yale published their findings about the potential costs of implementing solar geoengineering methods. The researchers found that the most cost-effective way of releasing sulfate particles into the stratosphere would be using a high-altitude aircraft. Such a program would cost about $2 billion per year for the first 15 years of use, according to the study published in Environmental Research Letters.

Read more about solar geoengineering:
This radical atmospheric hack could cool our planet super fast
'You terrify me': TED speakers duke it out over a plan to release massive amounts of chalk into the atmosphere

Harvard scientists will soon send chemicals into the atmosphere to see if a last-ditch planet-hacking plan could keep Earth habitable

JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!