The Overlooked Role of the Stratosphere Under a Solar Constant Reduction
Open accessAbstract
Modeling experiments reducing surface temperatures via an idealized reduction of the solar constant have often been used as analogs for Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI), thereby implicitly assuming that solar dimming captures the essential physical mechanism through which SAI influences surface climate. While the omission of some important processes that otherwise operate under SAI was identified before, here we demonstrate that the imposed reduction in the incoming solar radiation also induces a different stratospheric dynamical response, manifested through a weakening of the polar vortex, that propagates from the upper stratosphere down to the troposphere. The coupled stratospheric‐tropospheric response exerts a previously overlooked first‐order influence on southern hemispheric surface climate in the solar dimming experiments, including on the position of the tropospheric jet and Hadley Circulation and thus, ultimately, precipitation patterns. This perturbation, opposite to that expected under SAI, highlights the need for caution when attributing responses in idealized experiments.
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Solar dimming approaches would not account for the spectrally dependent scattering and absorption properties of stratospheric aerosols, nor adequately capture associated chemical and dynamical feedbacks, particularly those influencing ozone and stratosphere-troposphere exchange.
“While solar dimming provides a simplified means of approximating the cooling effects of geoengineering, such approaches would not account for the spectrally dependent scattering and absorption properties of stratospheric aerosols, nor would it adequately capture the associated chemical and dynamical feedbacks, particularly those influencing ozone and STE (Visioni et al., 2021; Bednarz et al., 2022”
From Air quality impacts of stratospheric aerosol injections are likely small and mainly driven by changes in climate, not aerosol settling (2026) · cites this paper as Bednarz et al., 2022
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- Authors
- Bednarz, E. M., Visioni, D., Banerjee, A., Braesicke, P., Kravitz, B., & MacMartin, D. G.
- Affiliations
- Cornell University (US)
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (US)
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (DE)
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (US)
- Corresponding author
- Bednarz, Ewa M.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2022-06-24
- Volume
- 49
- Issue
- 12
- ISSN
- 0094-8276 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-8007
- OpenAlex
- W4282919994
- Cited by
- 17
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 1
- FWCI
- 1.49
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Geophysical Research Letters (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- NOAA Institutional Repository (submittedVersion, public-domain)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (1818759, 1931641)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate Change and Geoengineering
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Atmospheric Ozone and Climate
- Keywords
- stratospheric aerosol injection, solar dimming, stratosphere-troposphere coupling, Hadley circulation, precipitation patterns, idealized climate experiments
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