Albedo Accord Book Proposal

[rob...@rtulip.net]

Dear HPAC & PRAG

 

Please see attached progress report, providing my proposed book outline and writing plan.

 

Book title is Sunlight Reflection - The Business Case for an Albedo Accord to Rebrighten the Earth and Cool the Climate

 

I would be grateful for discussion, here or at https://rebrighten.substack.com/

 

I have posted the draft introduction at https://open.substack.com/pub/rebrighten/p/sunlight-reflection-introduction

 

Many Thanks

Robbie Tulip

[Paul Klinkman]

Hi Robert,

Your book sounds like it canwind up breaking new ground with its focus on albedo.

A rain forest canopy is darker than a desert surface, but I'd go with the rain forest every time. Clouds over the rain forest lighten the albedo but they also serve an even more important function. They vertically transfer latent heat from the canopy level to halfway above earth's insulating blanket of air/CO2. For that matter, when incoming sunlight hits thunderhead clouds or when the sunlight is absorbed by added stratospheric particles and is re-radiated as heat, some portion of the incoming heat stops above much of the earth's greenhouse blanket and then this poorly trapped heat can then radiate back out into space at a faster average rate.

We're seeing positive feedback when the cloudlessness of megadrought sets in across much of the planet's land mass, also the cloudlessness extends farther out to sea in some trade wind areas. In a bad drought the regional topsoil becomes bone dry, and then the bone dry soil heats up over a period of weeks because of zero evaporation from the soil. NOAA's drought monitor map at https://www.weather.gov/phi/extended#extend is a real mess today as it often is lately.

Trillions of trees originally planted themselves in an optimum climate, but now find themselves and their seedlings in a non-optimum climate. Dead trees are fuel for megafires that take down many of the remaining living trees. The bare ground feeds our megadroughts. Also, the soot from these megafires makes the top centimeter of Greenland's ice sheet look all sooty and heat-absorbing. Stock footage can illustrate this effect for the reader.

An opposite effect may be happening in the region around the nation of Niger. Subsistence farmers have planted 200 million new trees with long tap roots in arid river bottom areas, sometimes in barren sand dune areas. Once the tap roots of these new trees hit paydirt, these trees humidify the local air all year long, enabling millet crop yields to double. This should be the real face of the sub-Saharan “great green wall” project. It gives hope to small groups worldwide who want to cool their own neighborhood's small patch of land.

I'll put out a few uncommon opinions on regional ice and snow formation soon. I really haven't thought SAI through, nor am I an atmospheric chemist by experience, but various regional new snow/ice formation alternatives look rather financially and environmentally promising.

Good night for now.

Yours in Hope,

Paul Klinkman