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conferenceseries
.com
Volume 8, Issue 10 (Suppl)
J Earth Sci Clim Change, an open access
ISSN: 2157-7617
Climate Change 2017
October 19-21, 2017
CLIMATE CHANGE
October 19-21, 2017 | Rome, Italy
4
th
World Conference on
Marine cloud brightening essentials for ethicists
Stephen Salter
University of Edinburgh, Scotland
W
hile there are hundreds of papers on the ethics and governance of possible solutions to the world’s climate problem,
only one of the authors, Clive Hamilton, has ever asked me for information about my work on Latham’s idea for marine
cloud brightening. Lathamwants to exploit the Twomey effect. Twomey measured drop sizes in clouds and their effect on cloud
reflectivity. He found that, for the same amount of liquid water in a cloud, a large number of small drops will reflect more than
a small number of larger ones. For many conditions doubling the drop number will increase reflectivity by over 0.05. Kohler
showed that drop formation requires some form of condensation nucleus. These are scarce in clean mid-ocean air. Latham
suggested increasing the number by spraying submicron drops of filtered sea water into the marine boundary layer where
turbulence would spread the salt residues left from evaporation. It is the number of nuclei of the right size that matters, not
the salt volume. Climate models show that the required cooling need could be done with quite moderate spray volumes. Many
papers on climate physics are written for climate physicists and can intimidate outsiders. This paper is written for people from
other fields. It will attempt to explain the physics of the Twomey effect and the engineering of the hardware needed to exploit
it. It will identify the key design problems of spray production and energy generation in mid-ocean. It suggests the use of wind-
driven spray-vessels with electrostatically charged mono-disperse spray from billions of submicron nozzles etched in silicon
wafers. It will describe a possible engineering solution using variable-pitch hydrofoils and attempt cost estimates.
Biography
Stephen Salter is emeritus Professor of Engineering Design at the University of Edinburgh. After an Apprenticeship in the aircraft industry he worked on a range of
problems including robotics, renewable energy, desalination, oil hydraulics, mine clearance, explosion suppression and voter-friendly traffic-congestion charging.
S.Salter@ed.ac.ukStephen Salter, J Earth Sci Clim Change 2017, 8:10(Suppl)
DOI: 10.4172/2157-7617-C1-036