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Climate|Could a Giant Parasol in Outer Space Help Solve the Climate
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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/climate/
sun-shade-climate-geoengineering.html

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Could a Giant Parasol in Outer Space Help Solve the Climate Crisis?

Interest in sun shields, once a fringe idea, has grown. Now, a team
of scientists says it could launch a prototype within a few years.

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Video
[01CLI-SPAC]
A group of Israeli scientists wants to send a giant sail into space
to block a portion of solar radiation. The shade in this artist's
rendering is enhanced to illustrate the concept.CreditCredit...
Technion Israel Institute of Technology and Asher Space Research
Institute
Cara Buckley

By Cara Buckley

Cara Buckley reported from Earth, specifically New York.

Published Feb. 2, 2024Updated Feb. 9, 2024, 9:41 a.m. ET

It's come to this. With Earth at its hottest point in recorded
history, and humans doing far from enough to stop its overheating, a
small but growing number of astronomers and physicists are proposing
a potential fix that could have leaped from the pages of science
fiction: The equivalent of a giant beach umbrella, floating in outer
space.

The idea is to create a huge sunshade and send it to a far away point
between the Earth and the sun to block a small but crucial amount of
solar radiation, enough to counter global warming. Scientists have
calculated that if just shy of 2 percent of the sun's radiation is
blocked, that would be enough to cool the planet by 1.5 degrees
Celsius, or 2.7 Fahrenheit, and keep Earth within manageable climate
boundaries.

The idea has been at the outer fringes of conversations about climate
solutions for years. But as the climate crisis worsens, interest in
sun shields has been gaining momentum, with more researchers offering
up variations. There's even a foundation dedicated to promoting solar
shields.

A recent study led by the University of Utah explored scattering dust
deep into space, while a team at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology is looking into creating a shield made of "space bubbles."
Last summer, Istvan Szapudi, an astronomer at the Institute for
Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, published a paper that
suggested tethering a big solar shield to a repurposed asteroid.

Now scientists led by Yoram Rozen, a physics professor and the
director of the Asher Space Research Institute at Technion-Israel
Institute of Technology, say they are ready to build a prototype
shade to show that the idea will work.

To block the necessary amount of solar radiation, the shade would
have to be about a million square miles, roughly the size of
Argentina, Dr. Rozen said. A shade that big would weigh at least 2.5
million tons -- too heavy to launch into space, he said. So, the
project would have to involve a series of smaller shades. They would
not completely block the sun's light but rather cast slightly
diffused shade onto Earth, he said.

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