Global Cooling Mitigates Global Warming

Kelp pizza: Marine permaculture establishes seaweed plantations offshore and allows them to move between the surface by day, where they photosynthesize in the sunlight, and the deep ocean at night, where they benefit from the deep sea nutrients. Kelp creates natural aerosols which stimulate the formation of clouds to cool sea temperatures.

Until recently, air pollution from ships was offsetting sea temperature rise. As soon as it was regulated, sea temperatures spiked, causing record planetary temperatures. Now that we understand that Ocean Mother Earth protects herself with clouds, maybe we can repair the problem with Nature Based Solutions like marine permaculture, stimulating the creation of clouds the way nature used to.

James Hansen was one of the first scientists to alert the world to the problem of global warming. Since the late 1980’s he was among those introducing the notion that human induced greenhouse gases( GHG’s) are trapping heat in the earth’s atmosphere. This has become well established worldwide, while climate action has focused on reduction in the production of GHG’s. Despite this, we are not even close to Net zero and climate change is accelerating beyond all predictions. We are currently shooting past the target of limiting global warming to 1.5 C beyond preindustrial levels.

One thing that is poorly calculated in the current models is the significant effect of global cooling. Scientists are beginning to understand that the cooling power of clouds is underestimated in our models. What cools the earth? Part of the sun’s energy is absorbed by the earth or the ocean, while part of it is reflected back into space by reflective surfaces such as clouds or ice. Every watt of solar heat that hits a reflective surface can bounce back into the  atmosphere and escape as infrared energy.  Every watt that is absorbed by the earth or the ocean is sensible heat, heat we feel, heat that makes our earth hotter. 

Water is the molecule that cools the earth by condensing as clouds or ice, and by removing heat from the earth’s surface as evapotranspiration. The ocean covers 73% of our planet and has been absorbing most of  our excess heat. Heat absorbed into the waters of the ocean can go down as far as 100 metres in a year, whereas on dry land it takes  6 months to penetrate 6 feet. The true equation for global warming could be expressed as heat absorbed vs heat escaped, global warming vs global cooling. 

Every 7 degrees of warming enables the atmosphere to hold double the amount of water vapor without condensing. Water vapor in the atmosphere requires small particles, or aerosols, to condense into clouds; the particle determines the size and quality of the cloud. Historically, these particles, called cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), come from nature. On terrestrial surfaces, forests and plants emit these natural aerosols, in the ocean phytoplankton, algae  and kelp create the natural aerosols which float in the air and cause water vapor to condense into bright, reflective clouds. Seasalt also acts as a CCN,  so ocean spray helps water molecules to condense into clouds over the ocean. But with the destruction of nature, forests, soils and algae have diminished, there are less clouds and sea ice is melting. 

With climate warming, Big Bear Solar Observatory has reported a 2% loss of earth’s albedo (reflectivity) since 2001 and a measurable loss of cloud cover over tropical oceans since 1985. We are losing the earth’s cooling function.

Ocean Mother Earth cools herself by the extent, duration and magnitude of low clouds. Restoring pre-industrial levels of such clouds is key- Brian Von Herzen

This loss of natural reflective cloud surfaces, however, has been masked because certain pollutants can also act as CCN aerosols. Notably, the sulfur dioxide aerosols created by the fuels burned in the shipping industry have served to mitigate the effects of warming from GHGs. The negative side of sulfur dioxide pollutants in the air is that they cause respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. In an effort to reduce this contamination, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) began to introduce regulations, beginning in 2010, to limit sulfur emissions in shipping fuels. 

These reductions have progressively gone into effect and each time they were implemented in a region, sea surface temperatures spiked anomalously within months. In the chart below we can see the exceptional sea temperatures appearing particularly between 2020-2025, in the North Atlantic, in the Mediterranean and in the tropical Pacific.

Hansen once again is warning the world that underestimating the effects of global cooling has inadvertently caused this precipitous acceleration of global warming, well beyond what all the current climate models have predicted. This discrepancy explains the unprecedented surge in global temperatures since 2023. Data from NASA’s CERES satellite confirms Hansen’s  hypothesis, the increased amount of absorbed solar radiation vs the decreased amount of infrared energy escaping into space correlates with the ocean temperature spikes in the zones where sulfur emissions along shipping lanes once created more cloud cover.

It is unthinkable that the solution to this off the charts acceleration of climate change should be to reinstate sulfur emissions along shipping lanes. But ERA member Brian von Herzen, founder and CEO of Climate Foundation, has proposed other solutions using nature-based natural aerosols. Climate Foundation was awarded  a 2022 XPrize for its novel carbon removal technology, the large-scale cultivation of algae and kelp in the deep seas. Climate Foundation’s innovative technology of marine permaculture enables the cultivation of massive quantities of algae and kelp by moving between the ocean surface where the plants photosynthesize by day, sequestering carbon and then lowering to the nutrient rich deep ocean by night.

This pumping movement between the surface ocean and the deep ocean mimics a natural phenomena, ocean upwelling which has been compromised by rising sea temperatures. Normally nutrients sink to the bottom of the ocean, where currents of cold water travel the ocean floor and then well up on the coastlines. It is the contrast between the warm surface and the cold depths that causes the upwelling and this brings nutrients up to the surface to feed the algae, plankton, fish and other species which dwell in the warmer surface waters. Climate Foundation’s technology enables the abundance of CCN producing algae while sequestering large quantities of carbon and providing food for both humans and marine species.

The second proposed solution for compensating for the lost CCN along the world’s shipping lines is to equip ships with a mechanism to spray fine droplets of sea spray into the atmosphere. Sea spray is also known for its ability to act as CNN. Having ships continue to produce clouds over the ocean with a non toxic substance may just buy humanity enough time to get our societies reorganized to reverse climate change.

With the current pace of warming we are on track to make large parts of the earth unlivable by 2070. We need to not only stop burning fossil fuels, we need to repair the carbon and water cycles and restore the natural cooling mechanisms that nature developed to keep the earth’s energy systems in balance. Simply stopping the greenhouse gas emissions will not suffice to repair the climate or draw the gasses out of the atmosphere. That is what nature does.