A research team at the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA) is exploring the possibility of removing excess water vapour from the Earth’s atmosphere to combat climate change.

While human-caused CO2 emissions are by far the most important driver of climate change, water vapour is actually the most abundant greenhouse gas. It is responsible for about half of the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect that helps to keep our planet habitable.

Scientists at NOAA’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory are now exploring whether, instead of removing excess heat-trapping CO2 from the atmosphere, we look to removing excess water vapour.

They have called their concept intentional stratospheric dehydration (ISD). It involves dispersing small ice particles into high altitude regions of the atmosphere that are both very cold and supersaturated in water vapour. These particles will then form ice crystals as they head towards the stratosphere in a region called the Western Pacific Cold Point (WCP)...