On June 18, 2020 Silverlining hosted a private briefing featuring leading research efforts in the most promising approach to rapidly cooling the climate—increasing the reflection of sunlight from the atmosphere. The event reviewed the basic science, the latest research and policy developments, and featured presentations by several groundbreaking U.S. and international research efforts in the field.

[VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS] [FULL VIDEO]

Agenda:

Near-term climate risk and response
* Tipping points and the near future, Will Steffen, Climate Change Institute, Australian National University
* Bending the curve by reflecting sunlight, Kelly Wanser, SilverLining

Research efforts in sunlight reflection
* David Fahey, Earth System Research Lab, NOAA
* Frank Keutsch, ScopEx, Harvard University
* Sarah Doherty, Marine Cloud Brightening Project, University of Washington
* Sean Garner, Marine Cloud Brightening Project, PARC
* Jadwiga Richter, GLENS, National Center for Atmospheric Research
* Douglas MacMartin, Cornell University
* Lili Xia, Rutgers University
* Andy Parker, SRMGI Developing Country Impacts Modelling Analysis for SRM (DECIMALS)
* Ines Camilloni, Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera, Argentina
* Izidine Pinto, University of Cape Town, South Africa

What’s needed and where we go from here
* Dialogue with Ko Barrett, Director of the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Division of NOAA and Vice Chair of the IPCC; James Hurrell, Scott Presidential Chair in Environmental Science and Engineering, Colorado State University, and former Director of NCAR; and Kelly Wanser, Executive Director of SilverLining

Opening, interim and closing remarks by Bill Trenchard, Rachel Pritzker and Chris Sacca

Moderated by David Biello, Science Curator for TED and author of “The Unnatural World”

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Global warming has reached new records with risks of catastrophic changes within a decade or two. The COVID-19 crisis has brought to light our vulnerability to systemic problems which, when unchecked, can grow exponentially. Climate change is this kind of problem, one for which today we lack emergency medicine.

Reducing greenhouse gases is foundational to addressing climate change, but even in the most optimistic projections, emissions reduction and carbon removal efforts require many decades to take effect, leaving us without insurance against near-term catastrophic risks. Many expect that the recent crisis will also constrain serious greenhouse gas reduction efforts in the next 5-10 years, the period in which many experts believe concerted action is critical to ensuring safety.

Scientific assessments suggest that the most promising way to reduce warming in the near-term is enhancing the natural cooling of Earth’s atmosphere by increasing the reflection of sunlight through scattering particles in the stratosphere or brightening clouds. Such approaches could act on the climate system very quickly—even within a few years. But today, we have very little information on these approaches, and scientists believe it could take 5-10 years of concerted work to assess them. Yet the global level of investment in research is less than $10m per year. While this field will ultimately require government and multilateral investment, philanthropic funding today may be critical to put us on track to answer foundational questions within a decade.

Photographs courtesy of Christopher Michel

SUNLIGHT REFLECTION BRIEFING: Research in Emergency Medicine for Climate