讲座简介：

Global warming is an urgent threat to which humans have responded with calls for greenhouse gas mitigation. Yet, by itself, conventional mitigation will produce barely-measurable improvement in Earth’s multi-decadal climate trajectory. This trajectory is driven by persistent imbalance in Earth’s energy budget, reaching a record surplus of 1.01 petawatt (peta = 10¹⁵) in July 2023. A dozen peer-reviewed studies of the climate impact of COVID19 lockdown measures confirm the existence of another 0.70 petawatt (1.3 W m^-2) of heating power that is currently masked by aerosol-forming, short-lived components in fossil fuel emissions. In total, Earth’s outstanding energy imbalance is roughly 100 times the global power consumption (18 terawatt) and locks in well above 1°C of additional warming, with potentially up to 3.3°C more by 2100 based on the most recent estimates of Earth's Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS). Therefore, to limit global warming to below 2°C we are obliged to address the problem of committed warming via direct climate cooling methods.

We take a pandisciplinary approach to design a new paradigm to guide human response to global warming. We introduce an universal metric called Cooling Return On Investment (CROI) for assessing the engineering feasibility of any climate mitigation concept. We find that the only existing climate adaptation and mitigation proposal capable of overcoming the energy imbalance hurdle are direct cooling methods. We assess the adaptation potential of mirrors in small-scale field experiments in soil, freshwater, and urban settings. We find cooling of air, soil, water, and infrastructure by between 1-20 degrees Celsius around solar noon, with strong suppression in the evaporation loss of water. We envision the preliminary data to inspire a conversation about the feasibility to experimentally determine the impacts on radiative balance, heat transport, atmospheric circulations, and cloud coverage at the micro and mesoscales. Such understanding is central for moving towards validating the climate mitigation potential of surface-based mirror arrays.

主讲人简介：

陶冶，哈佛大学生物化学学士，麻省理工大学物理化学博士，前哈佛大学罗兰研究所研究员，博士后导师，现任MEER（地表镜面反射地球能量收支再平衡）科研教育机构的执行董事兼首席科学家。MEER的宗旨是设计、开发和部署基于地表的可见光反射器/红外辐射器，和人类衣，食，住，行各种刚需耦合，从而在局部，区域，大陆，和最终全球范围内降低气温和极端天气灾害。MEER团队大胆追求有创造性的，可扩展的，和对全球暖化治理有确切效果的低科技工程解决方案。各团队现在在非洲，美国，和印度等地进行中小规模户外实验，期待与国内科研技术同行们一起把阳光调控和利用技术在更多领域开发普及。