May We Mitigate Tremendous El Niños by Artificially Altering the Climate? A New Research Indicates Sure

Researchers used pc fashions to see what would have occurred had scientists triggered marine cloud brightening within the face of sturdy previous El Niños

Margherita Bassi

| Daily Correspondent

July 9, 2026

Manipulating Earth’s climate to repair issues would possibly look like an concept straight out of science fiction and, certainly, may have unintended penalties.

Nevertheless, the authors of a research revealed yesterday in Science Advances argue {that a} explicit sort of geoengineering referred to as marine cloud brightening ought to be taken severely within the face of a recurring local weather phenomenon referred to as “El Niño.” The method could be controversial, however pc fashions point out its potential to mitigate El Niño’s damaging results, in keeping with the research.

El Niño and La Niña are two reverse, far-reaching climate phenomena that happen within the Pacific Ocean on common each two to seven years, normally for round 9 to 12 months. El Niño normally brings about extra excessive climate patterns and raises Earth’s temperatures. Given the shocking heat wave lately seen in Europe, it may not be shocking to be taught that we’re at the start of the latest El Niño occasion, in keeping with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which made the announcement a couple of month in the past. What’s extra, it’s being described as a “super” El Niño.

Intentional marine cloud brightening entails placing explicit aerosols into low clouds over water to make them extra reflective, additionally referred to as growing their albedo, the proportion of daylight mirrored by a floor, which might enable much less daylight to succeed in the ocean. Earlier research revealed that smoke emitted by Australian bushfires in 2019 and 2020 brightened clouds within the southeast Pacific Ocean and appeared to assist produce world climate patterns resembling La Niña—primarily El Niño’s reverse local weather sample.

In the wake of this revelation, scientists from the latest research used a pc mannequin to see what would have occurred if people had intentionally triggered marine cloud brightening within the southeast Pacific throughout sturdy El Niños in 1997 and 2015. Crucially, the simulation indicated that the earlier the employment of cloud brightening know-how, the simpler the mitigation of the tremendous El Niño penalties.

“We were able to turn what was an extreme or super El Niño into a neutral event, so it wasn’t even an El Niño anymore at that point,” Jessica Wan, lead creator of the research and a postdoctoral researcher on the University of Chicago’s Climate Systems Engineering initiative, tells Gizmodo’s Ellyn Lapointe.

Geoengineering may have severe and surprising penalties, doubtlessly fixing one drawback however inflicting one thing a lot worse. Kate Ricke, a local weather scientist on the University of California, San Diego, and co-author of the research, is typically cautious with regards to these interventions, however sees the advantages as definitely worth the potential prices.

“One of the biggest social concerns around geoengineering is the fact that if we use it to reduce long-term climate risks, we have to deploy it continuously for an indefinite period of time,” Wan explains in a statement. “If we could target natural variability, we could get some of the benefits of geoengineering without having to employ it indefinitely.”

Daniele Visioni, a local weather scientist at Cornell University who didn’t take part within the research, appears impressed by the findings. Employing the geoengineering technique in opposition to sturdy El Niños “is really interesting and very new,” he tells Science News’ Carolyn Gramling. “The fact that it looks like this could work is a really good indication that it is something worth thinking about.”

“Thinking about” is essential right here, because it doesn’t look like the idea is wherever close to real-world assessments. There are “many, many unanswered questions and uncertainties as to the viability of marine cloud brightening” within the context of managing the method’s cooling outcomes, James Haywood, a researcher on the University of Exeter who didn’t take part within the research, tells CNN’s Laura Paddison. In a separate interview with CNN, David Keith, a geophysicist on the University of Chicago, mentioned that whereas the research’s proof-of-concept is technically potential, “the technology simply doesn’t exist.”