Solar geoengineering, an idea that picked up steam over a decade ago when a Nobel Prize winning scientist called for more research on this climate engineering intervention, is back in the news. The idea made it into the 2019 UN Environment Assembly agenda and was used to kickstart a global conversation surrounding the contentious response to the climate crisis.
With growing urgency and scientific interest, a team at Harvard University took up the charge to investigate solar geoengineering in a fully fledged research program.
Solar geoengineering involves a plan that would disperse particles into the stratosphere and could ultimately reduce global temperatures by bouncing the Sun’s rays back into space.
However, this type of geoengineering intervention would not fix the root cause, which is the rising funnel of greenhouse gas emissions that are getting trapped in our atmosphere.