Barclay-geoengineering-policy-primer.pdf

[Andrew Lockley]

Geoengineering in the Canadian Arctic:

Governance Challenges

Jill Barclay

NAADSN Post-Graduate Fellow

Purpose: To explore the impacts of the potential deployment of Solar Radiation Management (SRM), a form of

geoengineering, in the Canadian Arctic.

Although geoengineering technologies are potential remedial measures to mitigate and slow climate change,

there remains no governance framework that can be applied to address the impacts and costs of such projects.

This policy primer examines the potential use and governance of Solar Radiation Management (SRM) to

increase albedo (reflectivity) in Canada’s Arctic region and divert incoming solar radiation to slow the warming

of Arctic sea ice and permafrost.

This primer considers governance models that may be applied to SRM governance in Canada. It is designed to

help inform policymakers and other stakeholders of important considerations when contemplating

frameworks. Given the serious threats that climate change poses to human security, Canada needs to be

prepared for the proposed use of geoengineering to address these increasingly pressing issues.

The Critical Importance of the Arctic

The warming of the climate is being experienced worldwide; however, the rate of climate change in the Arctic

is significantly higher than that of the rest of the globe. According to the Fifth Assessment Report (A5) of the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the warming of the Arctic’s ocean and atmosphere is

unequivocal and Arctic sea ice is vanishing at an increasingly accelerated pace.

1 The strongest warming is

found in the northern high-latitude regions, which includes the Canadian Arctic. It is estimated that the

summer Arctic could be ice-free as early as the 2030s.2

Because Arctic sea ice is crucial to balancing global climate systems, the loss of ice cover would dramatically

and severely increase the positive feedback loop in the climate system, further contributing to the warming

climate. Sunlight that would otherwise be reflected by sea ice would instead be absorbed. Moreover, the

carbon dioxide (CO2)that is already circulating through the Earth’s climate system will remain for millennia to

come.

3 Further exacerbating the warming climate is the release of methane gas into the atmosphere as sea ice

continues to melt. Methane, chemically known as CH4, is trapped within permafrost and the Arctic seabed.

[Tamas Bodai]

Under point 2. if by ‘positive feedback’ it is the ice-albedo positive feedback that is meant, then with the loss off ice this positive feedback is decreasing, not increasing. In other words, we have the ice-albedo positive feedback, responsible for Arctic amplification, only as long as there is snow/ice left.

Tamas 

Sent from my iPhone

On 27 Jan 2021, at 00:41, Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com> wrote:



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/geoengineering/CAJ3C-062BP6cJ%3DHT2S-N6Ls-kZwfd6%2BLpkQRv%3D8njk2t0hXHpQ%40mail.gmail.com.

<Barclay-geoengineering-policy-primer.pdf>