FW: Meeting of RMetS on Tuesday 8th December
SALTER Stephen
From: Richard Tabony <rta...@btinternet.com>
Sent: 30 November 2020 10:35
To: Richard Tabony <rta...@btinternet.com>
Subject: Meeting of RMetS on Tuesday 8th December
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ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, SCOTTISH CENTRE
MARINE CLOUD BRIGHTENING AS AN EMERGENCY BRAKE ON
CLIMATE DISASTER
PROF. STEPHEN SALTER MBE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
VIRTUAL MEETING, 6 PM TUESDAY 8 DECEMBER
SPEAKER
Stephen Salter is Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design at the University of
Edinburgh. After an apprenticeship in the aircraft industry as fitter and toolmaker
making parts for the SR177 supersonic rocket fighter and the Skeeter helicopter, he
worked on instrumentation for the Hovercraft and the Black Knight rocket. He read
Natural Sciences at Cambridge and stayed to work as inventor's mate for Richard
Gregory making a solid-image microscope, astronomical instruments and noise
recording from bird's eggs. He moved with Gregory to Artificial Intelligence in
Edinburgh to make the Freddie robot and an early touch screen on the absurd
assumption that children might one day have access to computers. Following the
cancellation of the artificial intelligence programme he moved to Mechanical
Engineering to work on energy from wind, waves and tidal streams. Projects include
wave tanks, desalination, voter-friendly traffic congestion charging, computer controlled
hydraulics, flood prevention, mine clearance, suppressing explosions,
nuclear disarmament, increasing the capacity of road bridges, hydrogen-fuelled
aircraft and now on the design of seagoing hardware for Latham's proposals to reverse
global warming by making clouds whiter. Reports of his retirement are exaggerated.
ABSTRACT
The global reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases that can be achieved by
societies may not prove sufficient to prevent severe global warming. More
intervention may be required and a possible method was proposed by John Latham in
1990. This involves increasing the reflectivity of clouds over oceans by altering the
size distribution of cloud droplets - a large number of small drops increases
reflectivity. Drop formation requires a condensation nucleus and Latham suggested
spraying sub-micron drops of filtered seawater into the marine boundary layer.
Kohler showed that salt residues make ideal nuclei and these could be provided by
wind-driven vessels cruising the oceans. The energy needed to make a drop of spray
is very small compared with the solar energy that a full-size cloud drop can reflect
back to space. Computer models show that spraying about 10 cubic metres of sea
water a second, in the right places at the right seasons from a fleet of some hundreds
of vessels, could offset the thermal damage we have created since pre-industrial times.
The presentation will describe the engineering problems and possible solutions.
This will be a 45 min talk followed by a 15 min Q&A. The meeting will open from
5:50 pm for attendees to join and the event will start promptly at 6 pm. Please
register for the event on www.rmets.org and join the meeting using Google Chrome.
Please note that joining instructions will not be provided unless you have registered.