Thread by @geoengineering1

🚨A NEW study explores a theoretical #geoengineering approach to combat global warming — by altering Earth’s orbit.

Simulations suggest that shifting Earth ~5.8% farther from the Sun could cool the planet by roughly 7K, effectively offsetting projected warming.

DETAILS🧵1/10

2/ Climate models suggest global temperatures could rise by 7K by 2100, driven by greenhouse gas emissions.

This study asks: what if, instead of changing the atmosphere, we changed our position in space?
Specifically: increase Earth’s orbital radius.

3/ Basically, the paper builds on the science of Milankovitch cycles which is slow, natural variations in Earth’s orbit and tilt that have triggered past ice ages.

These cycles show that even slight orbital changes can dramatically affect climate.

4/ So, using Newton’s laws (gravitational and motion) and the Stefan-Boltzmann law, the authors built a simulation of the Earth-Sun system.

They calculated how Earth’s equilibrium temperature would change at different distances from the Sun.

5/ KEY FINDINGS:

To offset a 7K warming, Earth would need to move from 1.0 AU (current distance) to about 1.0578 AU — ~5.8% farther (9 million km away) from the Sun.

This would lower average planetary temperature back to ~247K (pre-industrial levels without greenhouse effect).

6/ Furthermore, small tweaks (like a 2.5% increase in the semi-major axis) showed a significant drop in temperature — without catastrophic cooling.

7/ But this comes with a big change:

A year would grow from 365.25 days to 394.9 days.

That would mean longer seasons, major changes to ecosystems, and serious disruptions to agriculture and biological cycles.

8/ Researchers are also clear that:
-We can’t actually do this with today’s tech.

-It would require shifting the orbit of a 6 sextillion ton planet.

-But they concluded that the purpose of this study isn’t practicality — it’s to expand the boundaries of geoengineering thinking.

9/ Simulations were run using MATLAB and are open-source on GitHub.

They show how orbital changes affect both temperature and orbital period, validating the model with known data on Earth and Mars.

github.com/NirajPudasaini…

📝For more details, read the study entitled "Exploring Orbital Dynamics to Mitigate Global Warming: A
Theoretical Earth-Sun System Study" here:


Researchers: Niraj Pudasaini & Jennifer Tsai

🧵10/10 #Geoengineering researchgate.net/profile/Niraj-…

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