What is the connection between climate engineering and artificial climate chambers?

Climate Engineering

The term "climate engineering" seems quite novel at first glance. In people's minds, climate and engineering seem to be two different things that are far apart. How are they connected?

How far is climate engineering from us?

It turns out , the growth of humans and all animals and plants is inseparable from climate. Sunshine, rain and dew are the most basic resources for the growth of all things, but disasters such as severe cold, scorching heat, drought, and floods can cause serious losses and injuries. Therefore, seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages has become the primary driving force for humans and other organisms to interact with the climate.

When humans evolved to the point where they were able to engage in production and build homes, this activity of seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages took on the nature of engineering. Agriculture is an engineering measure in which humans use favorable climatic conditions to photosynthesize crops and obtain agricultural products. The ancients had already realized this and explained it very clearly. For example, "The Book of Binsheng" in the Han Dynasty said: "The way of farming lies in the right time, harmonious soil, dung marsh, and early harvest." "Plowing" is an engineering measure in agriculture, and "good time" It means catching up with the seasons and utilizing agricultural and climate resources at the right time. Here, climate and engineering come together.

The purpose of human beings building houses is to create a microclimate environment suitable for human survival and work. "Mozi" wrote: "The method for building a palace is: high enough to avoid moisture; high enough to protect the wind and cold; high enough to receive snow, frost, rain, and dew." Here, the building project is also connected with the climate. together.

The problem is that although climate engineering has been around since ancient times, people don’t call it climate engineering. This is because engineering measures such as agriculture and construction serve the urgent needs of life, thus emphasizing the purposeful aspect of the projects and failing to highlight their important characteristics in developing and utilizing climate resources and creating artificial microclimates.

However, in modern times, the situation has fundamentally changed. Due to the unprecedented development of productivity and the rapid increase in population, people can no longer just live in areas with good climate conditions. When humans enter areas with unfavorable climate conditions, they must take more and more advanced climate engineering measures to create an ecological environment suitable for human survival.

Especially in modern times, which has strong scientific and technological power, it uses plastic greenhouses, mulching films and other technologies to carry out agricultural production in protected areas, and even uses computers to control the microclimate in the greenhouses. This not only greatly improves the level of agricultural production, but also enables successful agricultural production in very arid deserts and alpine areas. The transition from agricultural production to industrialization has become a new direction for agricultural development. Isn't this kind of artificially created microclimate suitable for agricultural production a concrete manifestation of modern climate engineering? In the process of human beings conquering space, artificial climate technology has even shown its importance. The lunar immigration plan has been widely discussed in the scientific and technological circles, but the prerequisite for implementing this plan is to create a stable artificial microclimate. If successful in this regard, it means that humans can create a climate suitable for living and working under extremely harsh living conditions. Then, conquering various harsh climates on the earth and developing the entire earth will become a reality.

In addition, too many people live in areas with good climate conditions. Therefore, both residential areas and farmland need to grow rapidly to meet demand. As a result, the original ecosystem was destroyed, the atmosphere was severely polluted, and the climate continued to deteriorate. In recent years, the global warming phenomenon caused by the increasing levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to excessive use of fossil fuels by humans has sounded the alarm. If urgent measures are not taken, humans will use their own hands to destroy the climate conditions on which they depend.

Therefore, climate engineering has a dual nature. ① Professional measures to seek benefits and avoid disadvantages, such as housing construction, agricultural production, water conservancy construction, etc.; ② Nationwide, that is, to plan and manage climate as the unique environmental conditions and natural resources of all walks of life, so as to To achieve greater benefits and better climate protection. Among the two, the latter is more important and more difficult, because it requires the joint efforts of all countries and all walks of life in the world to achieve it. Since the 1970s, climate issues have attracted great attention from the international scientific and technological community. At the Second World Climate Conference held in Geneva, Switzerland, from the end of October to the beginning of November 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change presented a series of research reports detailing the issue of global warming. Based on various levels of fossil energy consumption, the degree of warming and its economic, ecological and social impacts were calculated, and based on this, possible countermeasures to protect existing climate conditions were proposed.

In the countermeasures, special emphasis is placed on the two strategies of "adaptation" and "restriction", and their costs and benefits are evaluated respectively. The restriction strategy is to limit the emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which can only be achieved by transforming existing industrial technology devices and energy structures. The adaptation strategy is to adapt to global warming by changing the planting system and rebuilding engineering facilities such as docks and embankments to adapt to the hazards caused by rising sea levels. Obviously, any strategy involves a lot of engineering technology and costs a lot. This can only be realized if countries and all walks of life reach a common understanding. It can be seen that this world-scale climate project is no longer the ideals and suggestions of scientists, but the largest human activity project that is forming an action plan and being realized.

This situation also marks that climatology is undergoing a process of development from science to a combination of science and engineering, which has important strategic significance.

The rise of modern climatology has opened up another vast world for the development of meteorology. Because the issues that modern climatology pays attention to are no longer limited to the laws of atmospheric processes themselves, but have been extended to the increase and decrease of carbon dioxide and other gas components that affect the physical and chemical properties of the atmosphere. They have also paid attention to large-scale human construction (such as opening up farmland). , building cities, roads, etc.) changes the ecosystem on the underlying surface resulting in changes in water and heat exchange with the atmosphere. These are all important reasons that affect atmospheric processes, and they are also the means that people can use to control and improve the climate. If climate workers do not understand the climate effects of these human projects, it will be impossible to understand future climate change.

Therefore, paying attention to climate engineering issues will make it possible to understand the regularity of atmospheric processes from the perspective of human activities and participate in such processes. This will obviously provide a new basis for solving the mystery of the regularity of atmospheric evolution and making good weather forecasts. It can be said that the continuous development of climate engineering will increasingly require meteorologists and all sectors of society to understand it, participate in it, and use it to make new contributions in adjusting the relationship between humans and nature.

Artificial climate chamber

In June 1949, the world's first plant artificial climate chamber was built at the California Institute of Technology in the United States. Since then, nearly 20 countries have successively established artificial climate chambers (boxes) of different sizes and types. Among them, Japan has the fastest development, with more than 70 artificial climate chambers of various types; artificial climate chambers have been popularized in agricultural technology stations in various prefectures and counties in Japan.

In 1969, the Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, built a large-scale plant artificial climate chamber with 25 natural light rooms and artificial light rooms. In addition, China also produces several types of artificial climate chambers.

Artificial climate chambers have developed to this day and are now used in fields such as marine, forestry, biology, environmental pollution, agriculture, and space development.

An artificial climate chamber refers to a closed isolation device that can artificially control factors such as light, temperature, humidity, air pressure, and gas composition. It is also called a controlled environment laboratory. It is not restricted by natural conditions such as geography and season and can shorten the research cycle. It has become an important equipment for scientific research, teaching and production.

Artificial climate chamber

The artificial climate chamber consists of three parts: a control room, an air treatment room and an environmental laboratory. ① The control room is equipped with regulators and patrol detectors that control various factors. The regulator indicates the positive definite values ??of various environmental factors required, and the patrol detector continuously detects the actual values ??and positive definite values ??of the environmental laboratory based on the patrol detector. The deviation between the values ??will automatically send action signals to various actuators (such as heat sources, cold sources, light sources, gas composition control systems) for action; ② The air treatment room is equipped with air filters, heat sources, cold sources, dehumidification equipment such as air conditioners and humidifiers, which operate according to the instructions of the indoor regulator; ③ The environmental laboratory is equipped with electric light sources and sensing elements that monitor light, temperature, humidity, gas composition and other factors, and are connected to the patrol detector. The actual values ??sensed are transmitted to the patrol detector and transferred to the regulator in the control room for deviation identification. Repeat this route to make the actual value in the environmental laboratory the same as the positive fixed value on the regulator.

Artificial climate chambers are often used to study the impact of environmental conditions on biological life activities, and can also be used for the cultivation, domestication, and breeding of certain organisms. Its scale and controllable conditions are determined based on needs. The small one is called "artificial climate box".

Artificial climate chambers can be divided into three types: room type, box type and hybrid type. The room type has a central control room and an environmental control room; the box type has an independent control system; the hybrid type refers to a room type artificial climate chamber equipped with an artificial climate box. According to the light source used, it can be divided into two types: natural lighting type and artificial lighting type. According to the type of control instrument, it can be divided into two types: conventional instrument type and computer type. According to the scope of application, it can be divided into two types: general type and special type. The general-purpose type is mostly a comprehensive factor control laboratory, and also has a certain number of single-factor control laboratories. The special type is often used exclusively for studying a certain object, and most of them are artificial climate chambers with small variable control systems.

So, what is the research on the use of artificial climate chambers? The following is an introduction in three points.

(1) Study the effects of temperature, air pressure, light intensity, etc. on life activities (including the effects on human body functions) to provide accurate scientific basis for the development of oceans, polar regions and the universe.

(2) Studying the effects of temperature, humidity, wind, rain, atmospheric pollutants, etc. on the growth and development, yield and quality of animals and plants can provide basic information for improving the yield and quality of animals and plants.

(3) Provide suitable environmental conditions for the selection and breeding of improved species of animals and plants; it can also provide scientific data for the prevention and control of biological pests and diseases. In the artificial climate chamber, it can accelerate the generation of biological reproduction, shorten the test cycle, and cultivate uniform and neat biological materials. Using artificial climate chambers to conduct productivity tests on vegetables and fish can achieve optimal results.

With the advancement of science and technology, the control conditions of artificial climate chambers are becoming more and more diverse, and the degree of automation and precision are also getting higher and higher. Those used in life science research tend to develop in the direction of specialization and miniaturization; while those used in optimized production tend to develop in the direction of large-scale.