No, you wouldn’t want to increase the albedo in the infrared, because the peak emissivity of the sun is in the visible spectrum, but the peak emissivity of the Earth is in the infrared. You’d end up blocking more of the outgoing radiation than the incoming radiation. Stratospheric aerosol injection plans also would not meaningfully impact either solar panels or photosynthesis, though. The plans on the table would adjust the global albedo by low single digits watts per square meter. Neither plants nor (especially) solar panels are operating so close to the edge of full efficiency that such a small adjustment would meaningfully impair their performance. The big problem with this proposal is that it’s likely to have all sorts of knock-on climatological effects, especially on precipitation levels and distribution patterns.
I mean, peak emissivity of Earth surely isn’t in the near-infrared, is it? My point is that you could probably dodge the most of it by carefully selecting the spectrum.
But thanks for your correction anyway, I appreciate discussion of sciency stuff in hexbear.
Peak for the surface is ~7μm, so not NEAR near, but not super far infrared either. This is the whole pickle with the greenhouse effect: the atmosphere is basically transparent with respect to peak wavelength for incoming solar radiation, but close to opaque for outgoing infrared. The idea with albedo modification geoengineering is to sidestep that problem by just cutting down on the amount of energy coming into the system before it even has a chance to pass through the atmosphere. It would definitely work at its primary task of cooling the atmosphere, but both theoretical and real-world models (like the eruption of high-sulfur content volcanoes) shows it’s also very likely to significantly disrupt other parts of the climate system.
No, you wouldn’t want to increase the albedo in the infrared, because the peak emissivity of the sun is in the visible spectrum, but the peak emissivity of the Earth is in the infrared. You’d end up blocking more of the outgoing radiation than the incoming radiation. Stratospheric aerosol injection plans also would not meaningfully impact either solar panels or photosynthesis, though. The plans on the table would adjust the global albedo by low single digits watts per square meter. Neither plants nor (especially) solar panels are operating so close to the edge of full efficiency that such a small adjustment would meaningfully impair their performance. The big problem with this proposal is that it’s likely to have all sorts of knock-on climatological effects, especially on precipitation levels and distribution patterns.
I mean, peak emissivity of Earth surely isn’t in the near-infrared, is it? My point is that you could probably dodge the most of it by carefully selecting the spectrum.
But thanks for your correction anyway, I appreciate discussion of sciency stuff in hexbear.
Peak for the surface is ~7μm, so not NEAR near, but not super far infrared either. This is the whole pickle with the greenhouse effect: the atmosphere is basically transparent with respect to peak wavelength for incoming solar radiation, but close to opaque for outgoing infrared. The idea with albedo modification geoengineering is to sidestep that problem by just cutting down on the amount of energy coming into the system before it even has a chance to pass through the atmosphere. It would definitely work at its primary task of cooling the atmosphere, but both theoretical and real-world models (like the eruption of high-sulfur content volcanoes) shows it’s also very likely to significantly disrupt other parts of the climate system.