Brigham-Grette, DeConto Among International Team Warning of Risks of Polar Geoengineering to Slow Climate Change

Two of the world's most eminent polar scientists, the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Julie Brigham-Grette and Rob DeConto, both from the Department of Earth, Geographic and Climate Sciences, are co-authors of a major new assessment into the risks of geoengineering the planet in order to slow climate change published recently in Safeguarding the Polar Regions from Dangerous Geoengineering: A Critical Assessment of Current Projects and Future Prospects.

The burning of fossil fuels continues to warm our planet. As climate change intensifies, Antarctica and the Arctic-the vulnerable regions at Earth's poles-are heating significantly faster than the global average.

Warming at the poles has severe impacts both locally and globally. It is already affecting fragile local communities and ecosystems through the loss of sea ice, glaciers and ice shelves. The melting of sea ice, which reflects the summer sun's radiation back into space, allows the ocean to absorb more heat, amplifying global warming. Melting of land ice also contributes to accelerating global sea-level rise.

However given the slow pace of decarbonization and the importance of the polar regions for climate health, some scientists and engineers have proposed technological interventions, known as geoengineering, to mitigate the warming's impact.