Blocking sunlight to curb climate change

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AccuWeather Forecasting Senior Director Dan DePodwin and AccuWeather Climate Expert Brett Anderson discuss the top headlines related to climate change in the May 2 edition of Climate In The News.

Transcript

00:00Today we're covering two climate stories. We'll start with a potential solution to climate change

00:05and then we'll turn to the impacts of climate change on pollen levels and a phenomenon known

00:11as thunderstorm asthma. Brett, this first story from the Independent on scientists in the UK

00:17attempting to dim the sun by putting things in the atmosphere to try to reduce the temperature

00:22of Earth. Yeah, it's a form of geoengineering. Geoengineering is basically a man's attempt to

00:28alter the climate and whatever they can do, but this attempt is not really a new thing

00:34I've read. Reflective, sending reflective particles into the atmosphere, which again would send

00:39more of the sun's radiation back into space instead of on the surface. Another idea they

00:43have is seawater sprays, I'm not sure how they do this, which would cause clouds to become

00:49brighter and more reflective. And finally, thinning cirrus clouds, which cirrus clouds actually

00:54act as a blanket, trapping more of the sun's heat closer to the surface. It's low cost,

01:00the study is, but if you're going to talk a global scale, I suspect this is going to be

01:04a high cost. Yeah, high cost. They've said they would do it safely, responsibly. Could be some

01:10negative impacts, though there's some concerns that could disrupt weather patterns and shift

01:14rain away from where food production areas are. So certainly yet another attempt at trying

01:18to alter and try to reduce the impacts of climate change, we'll see how that unfolds. We'll turn

01:24to our second story, this is from the BBC, about how climate change is supercharging pollen and making

01:29allergies worse. And one of the interesting phenomenons mentioned in this article, Brett,

01:34is something called thunderstorm asthma. Yeah, an event, what we call thunderstorm asthma,

01:40occurred in Australia. Ten fatalities, a big thunderstorm developed back in 2016. And what happens with

01:48thunderstorm asthma, thunderstorm, a very strong thunderstorm is able, with its updraft, draw a

01:54lot of pollen up into the storm. And once that pollen gets up into the storm, it gets broken apart into

02:00very tiny particles. And then those tiny particles come back down in the downdraft towards the surface

02:05and are spread everywhere and it becomes a big problem. Yeah, so certainly a lot of health impacts

02:10with these pretty rare events, but sort of broadening out to the larger picture about the impact of climate

02:15change on pollen. What are we seeing in terms of the pollen season? And are there any specific types of pollen

02:21that seem to be really increasing more rapidly? Yeah, the pollen season is certainly increasing. Ragweed is the big

02:26one, obviously the big problem here. And the ragweed season, Dan, has increased about 20 days over the past 20

02:33years. And the projections are that we could see another 50 days of the ragweed season. By the end of this century,

02:40already 50 million people are affected by asthma and pollen related issues. And a wide ranging problem,

02:47plants in a higher CO2 atmosphere, higher carbon dioxide, they emit more pollen. So this will only

02:52continue to get worse as climate change accelerates. Important to monitor pollen levels and be able to

02:57forecast them here going forward. Thank you, Brett, for those insights. For other information about climate

03:02and other stories, you can find that at AccuWeather.com slash climate.

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