Europe should ban the use of solar geoengineering over concerns that the untested methods could lead to unintended consequences, EU scientific advisers have said.
Methods proposed to reduce or counteract global warming by reflecting sunlight away from the Earth include stratospheric aerosol injection and cloud brightening.
Climate modelling suggests that some of these technologies might have the potential to prevent further global warming and reduce some of its effects, such as extreme weather events and rising sea levels.
But the EU’s Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM), which provides independent scientific evidence and policy recommendations, warned that deploying them could have a range of effects both intended and unintended that would be difficult to predict. For example, it could lead to uneven impacts on the climate in different parts of the world, and some of the larger-scale interventions would need to run for decades before their impacts are felt.
The review warned of negative...