Geoengineering strategies against climate change could positively impact agriculture 

Production differences (yield times crop area) in millions of tons per year between ARISE-SAI-1.5 and SSP2-4.5 from CLM5crop. Rice (a) and wheat (b) production are averaged over 2050–2069. Hatches indicate the difference between the two experiments is insignificant. Total Indian rice and wheat production time series (c). Shading represents the range corresponding to one standard deviation. Credit: Earth’s Future (2025). DOI: 10.1029/2024EF005262
On the basis of current carbon emissions rates and climate policies, average global temperatures are projected to increase to 2.9°C above preindustrial averages by the end of the century. Such an increase would severely strain global agriculture, making large tracts of current production areas unsuitable for crops and livestock. At the same time, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that food production needs to increase by 70% to keep pace with population growth.In the absence of notable emissions reductions, some observers have suggested such geoengineering strategies as carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification as alternative approaches for curbing warming. However, the effects of these strategies on food production remain largely unexplored.Grant and colleagues researched how stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI)—a geoengineering approach that mimics the effects of volcanic eruptions by releasing sulfate particles into the stratosphere to reflect incoming solar radiation—could affect agriculture in India, which has more total cropland than any other nation in the world. Agriculture employs 45% of the country’s labor force and generates more than $50 billion in exports each year.The new work is published in the journal Earth’s Future.The authors compared two climate simulations, both of which account for climate change, through the year 2069. In the first, the Assessing Responses and Impacts of Solar Climate Intervention on the Earth System with Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (ARISE-SAI-1.5) experiment, the inclusion of SAI limits warming to 1.5°C.The other, which follows Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 2-4.5 (SSP2-4.5) and does not include SAI, projects conditions in which both emissions and temperatures rise compared to current levels. The authors then evaluated how each trajectory influenced such climatic indices as total precipitation and warm spell duration, which affect rice and wheat production.The results suggested that the climate intervention scenario would improve rice and wheat yields in India relative to the nonintervention scenario—but with caveats. Chiefly, geoengineering helped maintain ideal temperature ranges for crop growth but did not alter climate change–induced precipitation extremes or drought. The results also suggested that rain-fed wheat would benefit more from intervention than irrigated wheat but that the effects on rain-fed rice would vary by region.The authors say the study represents a step toward unde