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RESEARCH PAPER: Marine Cloud Brightening to Cool the Arctic: An Earth System Model Comparison (AGU)
RESEARCH PAPER: Malaria transmission dynamics under climate change and solar geoengineering in South Asia: a GLENS-based assessment (Springer Nature Link)
OPINION: The Guardian view on solar geoengineering: Africa has a point about this risky technology (The Guardian Editorial)
NEWS FEATURE: How one controversial startup hopes to cool the planet (MIT Technology Review)
PODCAST: Fighting for a Livable Future: Exploring Frontier Climate Interventions with Kelly Erhart (The Great Simplification)
VIDEO: Huge Super-Volcanic Eruptions - How Sulphur released can COOL our Planet up to 4.5 C for 5-10 Years (Paul Beckwith)
UPCOMING EVENT: Preserving Our Glaciers: Interventions to Slow Glacier Melt (HCI)
Read on to unpack more updates:
Unchaining the atmosphere: rethinking solar geoengineering with Hannah Arendt
Authors: Linde De Vroey
Synopsis: This article explores the ethical and political dimensions of solar geoengineering using Hannah Arendt’s analysis of modern science. While SRM is often portrayed as human mastery over nature, the paper reframes it as an example of Arendt’s “universal” science, where interventions unleash unpredictable and irreversible processes. This shift undermines both control over nature and meaningful political agency, prompting new moral and political questions about SRM.
Forcing Susceptibility and Climate Sensitivity to Midlatitude Marine Cloud Brightening
Authors: Haruki Hirasawa, Matthew Henry, Alex M. Mason, Philip J. Rasch, Sarah J. Doherty, Robert Wood, James Haywood, and Knut von Salzen
Synopsis: Using three Earth System Models, this study compares MCB deployment across fourteen ocean regions. Results show that midlatitude ocean injections produce stronger cloud forcing, higher cooling efficiency, and more uniform global cooling. This strategy also yields temperature and precipitation responses that closely mirror, but counteract, greenhouse gas–driven climate change, making it more suitable for maintaining near-present-day conditions.
Marine Cloud Brightening to Cool the Arctic: An Earth System Model Comparison
Authors: Matthew Henry, Haruki Hirasawa, Jim Haywood, Philip J. Rasch
Synopsis: Marine cloud brightening using sea-salt aerosol injections is explored as a way to cool the Arctic and reduce global warming impacts. This first multi-model comparison using three Earth System Models shows that Arctic SSA injection enhances cloud brightness and can substantially cool the region, helping maintain sea ice under moderate emissions. While required aerosol amounts vary widely across models, results show limited precipitation changes beyond the Arctic and a maintained AMOC, though technical, ecological, and governance issues are not assessed.
Doubling down on emissions reductions
Authors: Wouter Peeters
Synopsis: This paper argues that public and policy discourse increasingly emphasizes supplementary climate interventions - adaptation, negative emissions technologies, and solar radiation management - at the expense of mitigation, creating a moral hazard that deters emissions reductions. The author contends that mitigation should be prioritized, NETs limited to hard-to-abate and legacy emissions, and SRM avoided or minimized due to their severe constraints and risk transfers to vulnerable populations, future generations, and ecosystems.
Malaria transmission dynamics under climate change and solar geoengineering in South Asia: a GLENS-based assessment
Authors: Athar Hussain, Muhammad Shoaib & Muhammad Latif
Synopsis: This study examines how SAI could influence malaria transmission across South Asia using the GLENS-SAI scenario compared with unmitigated warming (RCP8.5). Results show an overall reduction in malaria transmission intensity across the region, with significant declines in vector density and EIR in several countries. However, localized increases persist, driven by SAI-induced temperature and precipitation changes, highlighting the need for region-specific public health planning.
Direct Radiative Impacts of Stratospheric Aerosols on the Tropical Troposphere: Clouds, Precipitation, and Circulation in Convection-Resolving and Global Simulations - Preprint
Authors: Zachary McGraw, Lorenzo M. Polvani
Synopsis: This study examines whether SAI can alter tropical rainfall and winds through processes independent of surface cooling. Using a multi-model approach with convection-resolving and global climate simulations under fixed sea surface temperatures, the authors show that SAI reduces average tropical precipitation, though cloud radiative effects partly offset this response and add uncertainty. While regional rainfall changes can be large, impacts on the tropical overturning circulation are negligible. Overall, cloud processes remain the key source of uncertainty, limiting reliable prediction of SAI hydroclimate impacts.
Schematic comparison of malaria mosquito life cycles under (a) normal conditions and (b) GLENS-SAI, where reflected sunlight cools surfaces and may disrupt mosquito development and reproduction
(Source)Share Solar Geoengineering Updates
SaltWire – Gwynne Dyer: Is geoengineering the solution to climate change?
The Guardian Editorial – The Guardian view on solar geoengineering: Africa has a point about this risky technology
CFG – FAQ Spotlight: Doesn’t international law already prevent the deployment of Stratospheric Aerosol Injection?
Inevitable & Obvious – What It Takes to Make Cooling Interventions Thinkable
MIT Technology Review – How one controversial startup hopes to cool the planet
MIT Technology Review – Solar geoengineering startups are getting serious
The Standard – Lights out: can dimming the sun really save us from global warming?
Eos – Could Stratospheric Aerosol Injection Help Save Corals from Bleaching?
IJR – Zeldin Defends Those Worried About Tinkering With The Sun: ‘Not Conspiracy Theorists’
DSG – Elevating Global Perspectives in SRM Governance: Introducing DSG’s 2025 Early Career Fellows
LinkedIn – Paris plus ten: We need courage more than hope, as temperatures rise and geoengineering potentially looms on the horizon
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Fighting for a Livable Future: Exploring Frontier Climate Interventions with Kelly Erhart | The Great Simplification
“In this episode, Nate is joined by climate philanthropist Kelly Erhart to discuss the urgent state of climate science and emerging response strategies beyond traditional mitigation and adaptation. Kelly explains the climate research that reveals increasingly alarming risks, including natural feedback loops such as glacier collapse, declining albedo (the reflectivity of Earth), and methane release from melting permafrost. They also discuss frontier emergency climate interventions such as oceanic carbon sequestration, atmospheric methane removal, and glacier stabilization strategies, among others – while emphasizing that none of these replace the need for the drastic reduction of emissions.”
Huge Super-Volcanic Eruptions - How Sulphur released can COOL our Planet up to 4.5 C for 5-10 Years | Paul Beckwith
“If a super-volcano were to erupt today, it would likely eject so much sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere that the planet would cool by several degrees Celsius for up to 5 years. This cooling would very likely disrupt global agriculture and cause massive global food shortages, starvation, and huge numbers of casualties.
Such a super-volcano, like Toba that erupted 74,000 years ago caused human population die off and the subsequent DNA signature called a “genetic bottleneck” whereby the science indicates that we had less than 10,000 humans surviving that time period.
I chat about the main climate-altering super-volcanos (and lesser volcanoes) that have occurred in the past, and the risks of the next one happening and where that may occur.”
COP30: Sue Biniaz chats with Centre for Climate Repair | Centre for Climate Repair
“I wouldn’t want the world to be in a situation in the future where we are scrambling around for tools... and we say we don’t really have them or haven’t researched them because people back in 2025 were against it. To me it seems the responsible thing to do, to know what the options are.”
As the former US Lead Negotiator, Sue Biniaz got to enjoy the “greater metropolitan COP” outside of the negotiation rooms for the first time in decades. Yesterday, she spoke to us about the importance of showing up, her hopes for COP30, and the need for research on SRM.”
James Hansen: ‘What we witness now is scientific reticence on steroids’ | Climate Chat
18 December | Online - Preserving Our Glaciers: Interventions to Slow Glacier Melt by HCI (NEW)
9-13 March 2026 | Kyoto, Japan - CMIP Community Workshop (CMIP26)
21-26 June 2026 | United States - Gordon Research Conference - Bridging Observations, Models, and Impacts in Solar Radiation Modification Research
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