Tradeoffs inherent in solar geoengineering peak-shaving strategies

Abstract

Some have suggested solar geoengineering, cooling the planet by reflecting sunlight, could be deployed temporarily to shave the peak of global temperatures. This would use limited deployment to keep global mean temperatures below a given threshold, buying time for emissions reductions and negative emissions to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations. However, we suggest the trade-offs inherent in such scenarios are not widely appreciated. In this study, we explore general features of such scenarios, using a combination of simple analytical relationships between emissions and temperatures and modelling to illustrate the strong trade-off between the duration of geoengineering deployment and the temperature overshoot that is suppressed by geoengineering, as well as the scale of negative emissions that are required. Our results indicate that, unless climate sensitivity is at the high end of estimates, shaving a substantial peak, say, of 2K to 1.5K, would require at least a century of deployment of solar geoengineering and large-scale negative emissions, under a broad range of emissions trajectories. If negative emissions are not available at the scale of tens of gigatonnes of C02 per year, substantial peak-shaving will require deployment of geoengineering for multiple centuries. Our analysis emphasise the importance of factoring in the scale, feasibility, and cost of the negative emissions required to avoid indefinite commitment to solar geoengineering.