All it needs is a lick of paint!?

Whilst looking at some of the glacier-related headlines that have been in the headlines this week, I came across this article by the BBC in 2010 covering the rather unique idea Eduardo Gold had proposed to slow and potentially reverse the effects of glacial melt in alpine environments. Now, I've heard of hydropower and attempts to form clouds but I have Gold (2010) suggests painting a mountainside could be answer we have been searching for! It may sound unusual but there is some scientific logic behind it. White surfaces such as snow and ice have a higher albedo than dark surfaces such as rock and vegetation. As I have discussed in previous posts, as the glaciers have retreated this has reduced the albedo in alpine regions as ice-covered surfaces have been replaced by the darker rock surfaces underneath. Eduardo Gold argues that by painting the rocks white, it can increase the abedo and thus reflect more radiation to counteract global warming.

Gold's current work is based in the Peruvian Andes, near the village of Licapa. Although the success of this 'whitewashing' method is still highly debated it had gained the support of the World Bank who announced it as one of the 26 winners in it's '100 ways to save the Earth competition' in 2009 which had over 1,700 submissions.

Although organisations such as the UK's Royal Society have stressed that this scheme would only have local effects and that countries should still focus on cutting carbon emissions, it gives some hope about our potential to use geo-engineering to help mitigate against climate change. So if you get the urge to paint any rocks or mountains anytime some, I suggest you paint them white.

(To see a video of Eduardo Gold explaining the principles behind white washing, go to the BBC news website)

Figure 1: Eduardo Gold painting the rocks on Chalon Sombrero (Source BBC News, 17th June 2010)