Scientist aims at ‘brightening clouds’ to protect Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef has been under threat for a long time due to growing climate change, and now a scientist is working on a new technology in an effort to save it by ‘brightening the clouds’.

The Great Barrier Reef, Australia’s great natural wonder and a home to numerous marine life, is on the edge of dying because of coral bleaching. However, an Australian oceanographer Daniel Harrison is developing a technology to protect it by ‘marine cloud brightening’, as per the Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Coral bleaching occurs when the water is too warm and the corals expel algae living in their tissues causing them to turn entirely white, which is crucial for the health of the coral and the reef.

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Harrison’s new technology is designed to increase cloud coverage over the critically damaged Great Barrier Reef to curb rising sea temperatures. The method involves spraying seawater to help forming clouds, in which each droplet needs tiny dot of dust to condense onto.

“Over the land there’s a lot from dust and everything. Over the ocean they’re largely formed by sea salt. The idea is that we’d take sea water and we’d spray it out as these nano-sized droplets and they evaporate leaving the sea salt crystal behind,” explained Harrison.

With specially designed nozzles that spray a fine mist of 3 trillion droplets per second, mixing with atmosphere and carrying around a kilometer over the ocean, Harrison claims that the method will ‘brighten’ clouds over the reef through which they will reflect more sunlight back to space. “So if you shade corals, even if they’re warmer they won’t bleach,” Harrison said.

As per The Sydney morning Herald, the scientist explains that this technique is intended to protect the reef that has already been significantly damaged by climate change, instead of trying to stop the climate change.

“The amount of climate change that’s locked in now, even if we were able to suddenly and drastically cut emissions, means that the waters on the reef are going to keep warming over the next decade or two no matter what.”