It’s been a consequential month for research on solar radiation modification (SRM). And while there has been a lot of news lately that’s concerning to those of us working in climate, it’s important to celebrate progress in fundamental areas: advancing public research and creating more global connections across the SRM research community.
Opening Up SRM Research
On May 7, the United Kingdom’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) released its initial list of 21 grantees who will be studying climate cooling. With a budget of over $60 million, this is the largest government program in this topic so far, and this action is a critically important step from the UK toward the goal of increasing publicly-funded research.
The projects span a broad range of topics: from governance to modeling to small-scale experimentation. Even more importantly, ARIA has established a set of guidelines for research conduct and is emphasizing both transparency and public access to data for each of the grantees. Transparency and public engagement are essential to conducting SRM research in ways that are credible, salient and legitimate.
Lively debate from diverse voices
The second important sign of progress took place in Cape Town, South Africa, at the Degrees Global Forum.
Climate change is a global problem, and forms of SRM would be globally-impacting technologies; and yet the research dialogue has not been balanced across the globe. The Degrees Global Forum sought to change that, and as a result hosted the largest gathering of solar geoengineering experts thus far, including participants from a widely diverse group of countries and disciplinary backgrounds—from philosophy to engineering. Participants engaged in lively debates about the degree to which we understand the risks and benefits of SRM and the place for SRM research in an increasingly warming world.
While participants emphasized that SRM would never be a substitute for an accelerated push to lower emissions, there was also a sense that it was risky not to study these potential technologies, their possible benefits and unintended consequences. At the same time, there are critical questions that spurred intense debate, including the degree to which the possible existence of a future SRM capability would serve as a deterrent to mitigation.
Participants also sparred over how to enable responsible research—debating whether establishing norms about non-deployment would be sufficient to delineate the role of research or if something like a globally-agreed moratorium on deployment would be productive.
Finally, as several participants noted, SRM could only be considered within the context of strong commitments to reducing emissions. SRM, as well as other climate options such as adaptation to climate impacts or even carbon dioxide removal will not be sufficient to keep suffering at bay in a world drastically changed by warmer temperatures if we continue adding greenhouse gas emissions to our atmosphere.
EDF’s work on the impacts of SRM
Finally, I’m looking forward to the work we’ll be doing at EDF. As SRM research ramps up across the globe, we must set ourselves up for success. At EDF, that means deepening our understanding of the impacts that would be relevant to decision makers. They’ll need to understand how possible use of SRM would affect issues that all of us care about, from food supply to water availability and ecosystem health. And we will need to consider the impacts of SRM within a framework of accelerating risks from climate change.
In February, EDF hosted a workshop on how to harness empirical data from naturally-occurring events like volcanic eruptions that provide insights into SRM’s potential impacts. This month EDF released a call for proposals to study the impacts of one form of SRM, stratospheric aerosol injection, on these critical systems such as agriculture and water supply (to learn more, email us at srm@edf.org). It’s time to understand SRM’s potential impact through public, transparent research that reflects global insights and expertise.