The government is giving a team of British scientists £50m to research techniques to dim the sun in order to tackle the worst consequences of climate change.
Geoengineering methods have been proposed that aim to reduce or counteract global warming by reflecting sunlight away from the Earth through techniques including stratospheric aerosol injection and cloud brightening.
Global temperatures in the first quarter of 2025 were the second warmest on record, extending a run of exceptional warmth that began in July 2023. Now a team at the University of Cambridge are looking at whether geoengineering techniques could reverse this process – and whether they would be safe to deploy on a large scale.
A series of outdoor experiments are set to take place with £56.8m in funding from the government’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency, known as ARIA. In total, some £800m has been set aside to explore the techniques over the next four years.
The team will use Earth systems models to evaluate the...