The Christian Science Monitor has reported that the layer of gas in the Earth’s upper atmosphere has undergone the largest collapse since the beginning of the Space Age, baffling scientists.
One explanation for the phenomenon could be the fallout of intervention with our climate for military applications.
An upper layer of Earth's atmosphere recently collapsed in an unexpectedly large contraction, the sheer size of which has scientists scratching their heads, NASA announced Thursday.
The layer of gas – called the thermosphere – is now rebounding again. This type of collapse is not rare, but its magnitude shocked scientists.
"This is the biggest contraction of the thermosphere in at least 43 years," said John Emmert of the Naval Research Lab, lead author of a paper announcing the finding in the June 19 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "It's a Space Age record."
The contraction can in part be explained by the current low period of solar activity, which cools the thermosphere. However, the magnitude is nearly three times greater than what can be merely attributed to the sun.
When solar activity is high, solar EUV warms the thermosphere, causing it to puff up like a marshmallow held over a camp fire. When solar activity is low, the opposite occurs.
Recently, solar activity has been at an extreme low. In 2008 and 2009, sunspots were scarce, solar flares almost non-existent, and solar EUV radiation was at a low ebb.
Still, the thermospheric collapse of 2008-2009 was not only bigger than any previous collapse, it was also bigger than the sun's activity alone could explain.
The presence of carbon dioxide also fails to account for the rare occurence.
The missing component in the equation may be the undisclosed widespread release of cooling agents such as sulphur aerosols, which Bill Gates and others are experimenting with as part of a plan to reduce solar radiation.
The term for these ideas is climate geoengineering, specifically solar radiation management (SRM). Within a few years this acronym may be as familiar as CO2 emissions and climate change are today.
Messing about with the sun doesn't sound a natural solution to climate disaster, but it is not the preserve of cranks and despots. And it's probably closer than you imagine. Bill Gates recently gave $4.5m to researchers who model weather systems to better understand climate risks, of which $300,000 ended up with a controversial cloud-whitening experiment. Last year the Royal Society published a report on the issue, "Geoengineering the climate". It responds to the continued failure of politicians to tackle the escalating volume of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. "Efforts to reduce emissions have not yet been sufficiently successful to provide confidence that the reductions needed to avoid dangerous climate change will be achieved," it says. "This has led to growing interest in geoengineering, defined as the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic climate change."
Dr Nem Vaughan is a fellow of UEA's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and an expert in potential temperature-reducing technologies. She explains that SRM works by intervening in the amount of sunlight coming down to the earth. There are a number of ways of attempting this. The artificial volcanic eruption would involve injecting sulphur aerosols into the stratosphere – above the weather – that could be carried by aircraft.
In December, former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold went on CNN to discuss the subject of using geoengineering to address global warming.
The military, which is America's biggest polluter and has a close alliance with Microsoft, may view geoengineering as a way to address climate change without reducing their carbon output.
On the other hand, the Pentagon may view the field as a technological race to control the weather, before other countries do.
[G]eoengineering presents more than just an environmental question. It also presents a geopolitical dilemma. With processes of this magnitude and degree of uncertainty, countries would inevitably argue over control, costs, and liability for mistakes. More troubling, however, is the possibility that states may decide to use geoengineering efforts and technologies as weapons. Two factors make this a danger we dismiss at our peril: the unequal impact of climate changes, and the ability of small states and even nonstate actors to attempt geoengineering.[...]
It wouldnt be the first time states looked at the environment as a weapon. In the early 1970s, the Pentagons Project Popeye attempted to use cloud seeding to increase the strength of monsoons and bog down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In 1996, a group of Air Force and Army officers working with the Air Force 2025 program produced a document titled Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025. The Soviet Union reputedly had similar projects underway. But although the idea of a geoengineering arms race may superficially parallel this line of thinking, its actually a very different concept. Unlike weather warfare, geoengineering would be subtle and long term, more a strategic project than a tactical weapon; moreover, unlike weather control, we know it can work, since weve been unintentionally changing the climate for decades.
The offensive use of geoengineering could take a variety of forms. Overproductive algae blooms can actually sterilize large stretches of ocean over time, effectively destroying fisheries and local ecosystems. Sulfur dioxide carries health risks when it cycles out of the stratosphere. One proposal would pull cooler water from the deep oceans to the surface in an explicit attempt to shift the trajectories of hurricanes.
As Naomi Klein has chronicled, disasters have become big business. When the capability comes for man to play God over the weather, we must ensure that he is not also recreating the devil.