Preliminary results for salt aerosol production intended for marine cloud brightening, using effervescent spray atomization.

The large-scale production of vast numbers of suitable salt nuclei and their upward launch is one of the main technological barriers to the experimental testing of marine cloud brightening (MCB). Very promising, though not definitive, results have been obtained using an adapted version of effervescent spray atomization. The process is simple, robust and inexpensive.

Marine cloud brightening.

The idea behind the marine cloud-brightening (MCB) geoengineering technique is that seeding marine stratocumulus clouds with copious quantities of roughly monodisperse sub-micrometre sea water particles might significantly enhance the cloud droplet number concentration, and thereby the cloud albedo and possibly longevity. This would produce a cooling, which general circulation model (GCM) computations suggest could-subject to satisfactory resolution of technical and scientific problems identified herein-have the capacity to balance global warming up to the carbon dioxide-doubling point. We describe herein an account of our recent research on a number of critical issues associated with MCB.