Optimal Sunshade Configurations for Space-Based Geoengineering near the Sun-Earth L(1) Point

Within the context of anthropogenic climate change, but also considering the Earth’s natural climate variability, this paper explores the speculative possibility of large-scale active control of the Earth’s radiative forcing. In particular, the paper revisits the concept of deploying a large sunshade or occulting disk at a static position near the Sun-Earth L(1) Lagrange equilibrium point. Among the solar radiation management methods that have been proposed thus far, space-based concepts are generally seen as the least timely, albeit also as one of the most efficient. Large occulting structures could potentially offset all of the global mean temperature increase due to greenhouse gas emissions. This paper investigates optimal configurations of orbiting occulting disks that not only offset a global temperature increase, but also mitigate regional differences such as latitudinal and seasonal difference of monthly mean temperature. A globally resolved energy balance model is used to provide insights into the coupling between the motion of the occulting disks and the Earth’s climate. This allows us to revise previous studies, but also, for the first time, to search for families of orbits that improve the efficiency of occulting disks at offsetting climate change on both global and regional scales. Although natural orbits exist near the L(1) equilibrium point, their period does not match that required for geoengineering purposes, thus forced orbits were designed that require small changes to the disk attitude in order to control its motion. Finally, configurations of two occulting disks are presented which provide the same shading area as previously published studies, but achieve reductions of residual latitudinal and seasonal temperature changes.