Investigating the Two Year Climate Response to Stratospheric Aerosol Injection

Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) is a hypothetical intervention to mitigate effects from anthropogenic climate change by aiming to increase the atmospheric albedo and reflect incoming solar radiation. We explore the surface climate response to SAI using a novel dataset consisting of different combinations of injection scenarios varying by latitude, longitude, and rate of aerosol injection generated with the Community Earth System Model 2 with Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model 6 in a middle-atmosphere configuration. We focus on surface temperature changes over the two-year period immediately following new injections and identify controlling factors. We find that land surface mean temperature has a dependency on injection latitude but not on the injection longitude. Additionally, the aerosol injection rate impacts how much the temperature changes over the two-year period. We identify a linear relationship between land surface mean temperature and the injection rate. In contrast, the data suggests a nonlinear relationship between total column ozone averaged over the globe and the injection rate. Further research should be done to explore these relationships across a wider range of variables and vertical levels.