Solar Radiation Management

The Simons Foundation has launched an international collaborative research program designed to fill fundamental scientific knowledge gaps relevant to Solar Radiation Management. SRM is an emerging collection of proposed approaches, including stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), marine cloud brightening (MCB) and cirrus cloud thinning (CCT), designed to modify the Earth's radiative balance and cool the planet. This program aims to help fill key fundamental knowledge gaps in the science of SRM. Projects funded by this program involve passive observations of the existing atmosphere, computer modeling and small-scale experiments confined to labs. None involve in-atmosphere alterations or testing. The program is a three-year collaborative research award focused on priority areas including environmentally benign materials discovery, laboratory physicochemical characterization, assessments of approaches to minimize cirrus cloud formation, study of near-field atmospheric turbulence, and integration of improved representations into global-scale modeling.