A framework for minimizing remote effects of regional climate interventions: Cooling the Great Barrier Reef without teleconnections

Climate interventions like Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB) have gained attention for their potential to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems from the worst impacts of climate change. Early modeling studies raised concerns about potential harmful global side effects stemming from regional interventions. Here we propose a modeling framework to evaluate these risks based on using maximal deployment scenarios in a global climate model to identify potential pathways of concern, combined with more realistic large intervention levels. We demonstrate this framework by modeling a cooling intervention over the Great Barrier Reef using the Community Earth System Model (CESM2). We identify potential impacts on tropical convection that could produce remote impacts, and show that limiting intervention duration to deployment in the key season largely eliminates these risks. Overall we illustrate that the local ecological goals can be achieved at a level of cooling well below what poses a risk of signif..., The simulations for this study were conducted using the Community Earth System Model (CESM2, Danabasoglu et al. 2020; Computational and Information Systems Laboratory, 2023)) running in a “slab ocean” configuration. In this mode a simplified ocean simulates the mixed layer of the ocean and its interactions with the atmosphere without simulating full ocean circulation. The exchange of heat between the mixed layer and the deeper ocean is approximated with a prescribed monthly Q-flux that is derived from a fully coupled run of the model. All simulations are carried out under preindustrial conditions, with a 50-year spin up period to ensure the model reaches a stable equilibrium before perturbations are applied. 
Cooling interventions are implemented using an additional Q-flux term to specify a forcing at the surface of the ocean. The advantage of this approach is that it allows direct control of the location and amount of forcing applied, and can be used to represent cooling that is a..., , # Data from: A framework for minimizing remote effects of regional climate interventions: Cooling the Great Barrier Reef without teleconnections

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.zpc866tj4](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.zpc866tj4)

## Description of the data and file structure

### File naming scheme

The naming scheme for all model output netcdf files is as follows:

`derecho-som-[experiment]-[branch_year]-[variable]-[timescale].nc`

* *experiment*
* ‘control-qdpnoise[n]’ to indicate the 3 control branches that each have a different random noise pattern added
* ‘anom-eez-[forcing]’ to indicate a [forcing] W/m2 of cooling applied year-round within the domain bounded by the exclusive economic zone
* ‘anom-eez-[forcing]DJF’ to indicate a [forcing] W/m2 of cooling applied only during DJF within the domain bounded by the exclusive economic zone
* *branch_year*
* Indicates which year the simulation was branched from the spinup simulation
* *variable*
* CESM2 variable names. Included ...,