This road map could help us decide whether to deploy solar geoengineering
The nonprofit organization Reflective has released a research road map detailing the experiments and infrastructure needed to evaluate solar geoengineering. The plan aims to provide data for informed decision-making on stratospheric aerosol injection within a decade.
Why it matters
As climate change accelerates, solar geoengineering is increasingly viewed as a potential, albeit controversial, emergency intervention that requires rigorous scientific vetting.
A new report from the nonprofit Reflective lays out the experiments needed to better understand our ability to dim the sun.
A San Francisco nonprofit has published a detailed road map of the experiments, studies, and infrastructure that it says would be needed to make informed decisions about the use of solar geoengineering, MIT Technology Review can reveal.
Scientists have now spent half a century exploring the possibility that we could counteract climate change by releasing reflective particles into the stratosphere, mimicking the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions.
But even after at least hundreds of studies on the concept, known as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), big gaps remain in the scientific understanding of how well it would work and what else it might do—and there has been no systematic plan for clearing up that uncertainty.
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