I thought about the Mahdi
As the world wrestles with the Covid-19 virus, the Great Barrier Reef near Queensland, northern Australia, faces its third "unexpected" collective bleaching crisis in just five years.
Days before the global curfew was imposed to tackle the Coronavirus, Southern Cross University announced on its website the success of an experiment conducted by an Australian research team applying "cloud brightness" technology off the coast of Townsville, to protect coral reef systems from future bleaching events.
This experiment is the first of its kind in the world especially that it does not use any chemicals, and depends on natural materials.
Cloud brightness technology Cloud brightness technology
relies on cloud cover processing to reflect more sunlight into space.
It is a proposed technology for managing solar radiation. The researchers believe that this technology can reduce the temperature of the atmosphere and oceans because it absorbs less energy from the sun, but it will not reduce levels of greenhouse gases.
This technology remained trapped in theoretical research until it was transferred by Dr. Harrison, in cooperation with his team from Southern Cross University, to the initial experimentation stage on a limited area of the Australian coral barrier.
The researchers hope that this technology will be applicable to the entire Great Barrier Reef in the near future, in order to reduce the intensity of coral bleaching during sea heat waves, coral cooling and shading there.
Watch how the Great Barrier Reef can be protected:
Salt crystals to reflect light
The technique is applied by using drones in the atmosphere and a ship prepared to take samples at a depth of 5 km from the sea surface. The researchers tested the results at a distance of one tenth of the target span of the coral reef.
A system that sprays microscopic seawater droplets into the air has been prepared to evaporate, leaving behind sea salt crystals only the size of the nano, to act as the nucleus of cloud droplets, which increases cloud brightness, and then works to reflect solar energy away from coral reef water.
The team believes that "cloud brightness" technology is one of the most promising innovative methods that can protect very large areas of coral reefs around the world.
The technology is likely to contribute to protecting the entire Great Barrier Reef from bleaching in a relatively cost-effective and time-efficient manner that reduces bleach stress by about 70%. It can also give us a period of two decades before we witness the collapse of the coral barrier in the event of continued emissions that increase the usual global warming.
Watch why the Great Barrier Reef should be protected:
Support to protect the coral barrier
Researchers from the National Center for Marine Science at Southern Cross University in Coffs Harbor collaborated with the Sydney Institute of Marine Sciences (CIMS), the University of Sydney and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) to test prototype equipment developed in partnership With EmiControls, the Italian company.
On April 16, the federal government adopted a $ 150 million research and development phase of the world's leading reef resilience and adaptation (RRIB) program to help preserve the Great Barrier Reef which includes larger experiments of Dr. Harrison's technology in "cloud brightness".
The team plans to test the technology three times the size in the next year, and the trial area is likely to increase in two years to cover an area of 400 km.
The researchers emphasize the importance of research in all aspects of technology including looking at environmental hazards, such as whether technology can alter rainfall patterns over the ocean or the earth.