Researchers in Texas, Georgia (USA), and Germany, Christian Claudel, Fabian Hoffmann, and Younan Xia, have proposed a method of Marine Cloud Brightening that appears to be a major advance in the field.

Instead of creating salt nanoparticles by spraying seawater into the air, their method creates salt nanoparticles in land-based factories using waste brine from desalination plants that are making fresh water for drinking and agriculture.

The primary energy needs can be met from low temperature sources such as geothermal or surplus heat from from power plants.  

The nanoparticles are made by a well developed method that results in high uniformity of particle size and can be tuned to the optimum size.

If salt nanoparticles are made by evaporating seawater in the air, this cools the air and causes it to sink. In the newly proposed method, the particles are sprayed from a flying drone at an optimum altitude rather than from a floating ship and air in the wake does not sink. Because the drone moves much faster than a ship, better dispersion of particles is achieved.

The drones can be powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

The drones can remain on land when there are storms.

Technologies to implement this system are well developed. The system can be made operational with no delay for basic R&D. Once a first implementation is operational, the methods will be further refined to reduce costs and improve results.

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