Study: Blocking sunlight with moon dust may reduce global warming

A recent study revealed that releasing a cloud of dust from the surface of the moon to reduce the ability of sunlight to reach Earth could help cool our planet.
But the study still needs more research to determine the risks to agriculture, ecosystems, and water quality, which are still unclear.
Previous studies have investigated the idea of ​​releasing more than 100 million tons of dust between Earth and the sun with the aim of blocking sunlight from reaching our planet as a way to combat climate change, as particles absorb light energy or scatter rays away from Earth.
To do this, dust will have to be fired at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, precisely at the “first Lagrangian point”, where the gravitational force of the sun and the earth is absent.
But the energy from sunlight and particles emitted by the sun, known as the solar wind, will gradually push the dust away from the first Lagrangian point, which needs to be corrected.
Now, after running thousands of computer simulations, University of Utah researcher Benjamin Bromley and his colleagues have concluded that a continuous torrent of lunar dust from the moon’s north pole toward the first Lagrangian point at 2.8 kilometers per second might be a better approach.
Considering factors such as the sun’s gravitational pull, planets and the influence of the solar wind, the simulations found that keeping a million-ton shield of dust near the first Lagrangian point for an entire year would dilute the sun’s radiation by 1.8 percent, which is equivalent to Complete blackout of sunlight for six days.
According to Ben Kravitz, a researcher at Indiana University, if this method continues until other measures are taken to remove carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere, this may offset the increase in carbon dioxide concentration that has occurred since the industrial revolution.
“If this method works, it will have an impact in reducing global temperatures, but it is difficult to judge whether the result is worth all the effort and resources involved,” Kravitz said.
However, shading the planet will have different effects in several regions, “temperatures, precipitation, winds and other phenomena will change as a result of this strategy. These changes will have implications for agriculture, ecosystems, and water quality,” says Kravitz.