Chris Sacca, Bill Trenchard, and Rachel Pritzker invite you to join 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.

MAIN EVENT: June 18, 2020, 9:00am-12:00pm Pacific Time via Video Conference (details to come). The main event will review the basic science of sunlight reflection, cover the latest research and policy developments, and feature presentations by several groundbreaking research efforts in the field.

Featured research efforts: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - University of Washington Marine Cloud Brightening - National Center for Atmospheric Research Geoengineering Large Ensemble (GLENS) - Cornell University Climate Engineering Laboratory - Rutgers Impact Studies of Climate Intervention (RISCI) Lab - Developing Country Impacts Modeling Analysis of SRM (DECIMALS) - Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera, Argentina - University of Cape Town, South Africa
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
Moderated by David Biello, Science Curator for TED and author of “The Unnatural World”

FUNDER DISCUSSION: June 23, 2020, 4:00pm-5:00pm Pacific Time via Video Conference (details to come). Our hosts will lead a candid discussion of the dynamics of philanthropic funding in this challenging emerging space. The event includes dialogue with Alex Wong, recently of DARPA, on research funding for maximum results.

___________________________________________

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