Heat Wave Suppression with Tropospheric Aerosol Injection

Excess heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths today. While rapid decarbonization is essential, it alone cannot eliminate near-term heat risks. In many regions, the most severe impacts of excess heat occur over short time periods, lasting only a few days or a week (heat waves). This suggests that targeted interventions that reduce occurrences of these events could have a disproportionate benefit for society.

One potential approach is the localized injection of aerosols in the middle to upper troposphere, which might temporarily reduce extreme temperatures. However, air pollution itself is a primary cause of environmentally related mortality risk and is the leading risk factor in the global burden of disease. Therefore, any deliberate release of aerosols could have an overall negative impact on health, outweighing the benefits of cooling.

This project will develop the first risk-risk modeling framework for the intentional injection of aerosols in the troposphere for cooling. The project will assess both cooling and air pollution-related health outcomes using high resolution coupled weather-chemical transport model simulations and state-of-the-art dose-response functions for air quality and heat exposure from econometrics and epidemiology. The results will inform whether these potential local climate intervention strategies could be both technically feasible and societally beneficial.