Newswise — Injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to reflect solar radiation and cool the planet should only be considered as a last-ditch approach to climate change, said Natalie Mahowald, professor and director of graduate studies in Cornell’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

Mahowald says:

“Solar radiation management techniques, like injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, are really just Band-Aids that should only be tried if close to a tipping point – or irreversible climate change – and should only planned to be used for a short time.

“In the long run, we can’t really use it to offset emissions of carbon dioxide because of the very long time commitment involved. For example if we start injecting sulfur dioxide instead of cutting carbon dioxide, we are basically committing ourselves to several thousands of years of sulfur dioxide emissions after we stopped emitting carbon dioxide –¬ because of the very long residence time of carbon dioxide.

“If we for some reason stopped injecting the sulfur dioxide, all the climate change we had avoided would occur over a very short time period, which would likely be worse than just letting the climate change from carbon dioxide occur. Since it is unlikely that we would know before a tipping point occurred that a tipping point was going to occur, it seems unlikely that injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere is an approach that would help us, and more likely that it would cause problems.”