Solar geo-engineering projects aimed at cooling the Earth’s surface and limiting global warming are dangerous and should be stopped by governments, 60 experts and scientists argue in a letter published Monday.

The injection of billions of sulfur particles into the upper atmosphere – one of the most controversial deliberate solar reform projects – may reflect some of the sunlight, but the side effects may outweigh the benefits, as this open letter makes clear with a text in the journal. Climate change of wires.

“The deployment of solar geoengineering cannot be managed in a fair, inclusive and effective manner globally.

Geoengineering tracks to limit global warming by reflecting sunlight (AFP /)

The planet has reached about +1.1 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, which has already led to an increase in heat waves, floods and storms.

The world is committed to limiting this heating to + 2 ° C and below + 1.5 C if possible, but UN Climate Experts (IPCC) estimates that the limit of + 1.5 ° C will be reached by 2030.

Faced with the failure to reduce CO2 emissions caused by global warming, some politicians are now backing geo-engineering to buy time.

Scientists have long known that injecting large amounts of reflective particles into the upper layer of the atmosphere will cool the planet.

Worldwide temperature anomalies are detected each year between 2002 and 2021, compared to the average for the period 1981-2010 (AFP /)

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Predictions of the eruption of the Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines in 1991 reduced the Earth’s average surface temperature to one year.

But above all, an open letter highlights the dangers.

Deliberate modification of solar radiation, for example, will disrupt monsoon rule in South Asia and West Africa and destroy crops on which hundreds of millions of people depend, according to studies already published.

Once the radiation modification is complete, the IPCC estimates that “for some reason, the surface temperature is likely to rise rapidly.”

Moreover, this technology does not prevent the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Monthly evolution of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane, since 2003 (AFP /)

Signatories such as Aarti Gupta, a professor at the Dutch University of Wageningen, or Dirk Messner, president of the German Environment Agency, are also concerned about the risk of creating false hopes for a solution to global warming. Communities from doing everything possible to achieve carbon neutrality as soon as possible “.

Finally, experts point to the lack of governance to oversee these projects.

It therefore calls for an open letter to an “international non-compliance agreement” that would prevent funding, testing and patenting of these technologies, without stopping scientific research.

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