Researchers have proposed sending satellites into space that would reflect solar energy, injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere, cloud-seeding to make them more reflective, or whitening roofs and developing reflective crops that would not absorb as much sun.
The chemical composition and net mass of disintegrating meteors are important, since they are related to many physical and chemical phenomena such as polar mesospheric summer echoes and noctilucent clouds in the mesosphere as well as polar stratospheric clouds in the stratosphere.
The explosion would have thrown large amounts of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, causing cloud formation, cooling the earth, limiting photosynthesis, long periods of acid rain, and spelling death to many of the sea's creatures.
The solid and liquid particles which constitute polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) are of manifold importance to the meteorology of the stratosphere.
The radar is designed to clarify the role of atmospheric gravity waves at high latitudes in the momentum budget of the global circulation in the troposphere, stratosphere and mesosphere, and to explore the dynamical aspects of unique polar phenomena such as polar mesospheric clouds (PMC) and polar stratospheric clouds (PSC).
The growth in tropospheric methane may have increased the water concentration in the stratosphere by as much as 28% since the 1940s and 45% over the past two centuries and thus could have increased the mass of precipitable water available for formation of polar stratospheric clouds.
In 1883, Krakatoa erupted, spewing volcanic ash and gas into the stratosphere, making clouds more reflective and cooling the entire planet by roughly 1° C that year.
Positive differences may occur when water vapor is present in the stratosphere above the cloud top, which is a sign of convective cloud tops (Fritz and Laszlo 1993; Schmetz et al. 1997) as opposed to mere cirrus clouds.
The adiabatic heating of the high latitude stratosphere above the cloud, which is suggested by the temperature increase at high latitude (Crisp, 1989; Pätzold et al., 2007), and the increased CO mixing ratio in the high-latitude below the cloud layer (Collard et al., 1993; Tsang et al., 2008) are thought to be attributed to the downward branch of the cloud-level Hadley circulation.
But just like the minions and lemmings who followed Howard in droves (which propelled him into the Sirius cloud stratosphere) the same group of America's finest, aka the Confederacy of Donces, found their new infant king.
Injecting aerosols into the stratosphere or brightening clouds would do more than just cool the planet.
