Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?

Abstract

While stabilization of CO2 would require a 60-80% reduction in current anthropogenic CO2 emissions,worldwide they actually increased by 2% from 2001 to 2002, a trend, which probably will not change at least for the remaining 6-year term of the Kyoto protocol, further increasing the required emission restrictions. Crutzen says the usefulness of artificially enhancing earth's albedo and thereby cooling climate by adding sunlight reflecting aerosol in the stratosphere might again be explored and debated as a way to defuse the Catch-22 situation and additionally counteract the climate forcing of growing CO2 emissions.