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| - FACT CHECK: Is NASA Planning To Blast Ice Particles Into The Atmosphere To Fight Climate Change?
A video shared on Facebook claims the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is purportedly planning to inject ice particles into the atmosphere to fight climate change.
Verdict: False
The claim is false. The idea was proposed via a study conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and serves as a collaboration between NOAA and NASA, but has not been put into practice. A NASA spokesperson denied the claim’s validity in an email to Check Your Fact.
Fact Check:
A “fresh group of NASA astronauts” who just completed basic training will participate in the first Boeing Starliner test launch in May, according to Space.com. The launch will be a week-long mission, the outlet reported.
In the Facebook video, an unnamed male claims NASA is purportedly planning to inject ice particles into the atmosphere to fight climate change based on an article from Unilad. The video, which originally stems from TikTok, has garnered over 1,000 views as of writing.
The claim is false, however. The Unilad article, published on Mar. 1, 2024, makes it clear that injecting ice particles into the atmosphere is only a “proposed solution” and has not been put into practice. The article also indicates the proposal is a collaboration between NASA and NOAA and references a recent piece from the Daily Mail that cites a study conducted by NOAA physicist Josh Schwarz.
According to the study, the concept is called intentional stratospheric dehydration and “would involve dispersing small particles (known as ice nuclei) into high altitude regions of the atmosphere that are both very cold and super-saturated in water vapor. These nuclei would increase the formation of ice crystals that otherwise would not have formed.”
“This ‘[ISD]’ strategy would not counteract a large fraction of the forcing from carbon dioxide but may contribute to a portfolio of climate interventions by acting with different time and length scales of impact and risk than other interventions that are already under consideration,” Schwarz and his co-authors wrote in the same study.
Likewise, Check Your Fact found no credible news reports to support the claim. In fact, the opposite is true. Both Lead Stories and USA Today debunked the claim in Mar. 8 and Mar. 15 articles, respectively. (RELATED: No, 80 Percent Of Texas’ ‘Cattle Grazing Land’ Was Not Destroyed By Recent Fires)
Additionally, the claim is neither referenced on NASA’s website nor its verified social media accounts. NOAA also has not publicly commented on the claim.
NASA Spokesperson Allard Beutel denied the claim’s validity in an email to Check Your Fact.
“This is an unfortunate mischaracterization of a study done by another agency. As this was a study, NASA is not planning to inject ice into the stratosphere,” Beutel said.
Check Your Fact has also contacted NOAA for comment and will update this piece accordingly if one is received.
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