Solar geoengineering describes a set of proposals to deliberately alter the earth’s radiative balance to reduce climate risks. We elicit judgements on natural science research priorities for solar geoengineering through a survey and in-person discussion with 72 subject matter experts, including two thirds of all scientists with ≥10 publications on the topic. Experts prioritized Earth system response (33%) and impacts on society and ecosystems (27%) over the human and social dimensions (17%) and developing or improving solar geoengineering methods (15%), with most allocating no effort to weather control or counter-geoengineering. While almost all funding to date has focused on geophysical modeling and social sciences, our experts recommended substantial funding for observations (26%), perturbative field experiments (16%), laboratory research (11%) and engineering for deployment (11%). Of the specific proposals, stratospheric aerosols received the highest average priority (34%) then marine cloud brightening (17%) and cirrus cloud thinning (10%). The views of experts with ≥10 publications were generally consistent with experts with <10 publications, though when asked to choose the radiative forcing for their ideal climate scenario only 40% included solar geoengineering compared to 70% of experts with <10 publications. This suggests that those who have done more solar geoengineering research are less supportive of its use in climate policy. We summarize specific research recommendations and challenges that our experts identified, the most salient of which were fundamental uncertainties around key climate processes, novel challenges related to solar geoengineering as a design problem, and the challenges of public and policymaker engagement.

Solar climate intervention, also known as solar radiation modification, is an approach intended to mitigate the impacts of climate change by reducing the amount of solar energy that the Earth system traps. It sits alongside three other plausible responses to climate risk: emission cuts and decarbonization, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) removal, and adaptation to a changing climate.

Unlike the other approaches, solar climate intervention (SCI), which comprises various techniques, aims to modify Earth’s radiation budget—the amounts and balance of solar energy that Earth absorbs and reflects—directly. Implementing SCI means either decreasing inbound solar (shortwave) radiation by reflecting it back into space before it is absorbed or increasing the amount of outbound terrestrial (longwave) radiation.

Potential methods of SCI include stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), marine cloud brightening, cirrus cloud thinning, surface albedo modification, and space-based methods involving, for example, mirrors (Figure 1). At present, the potential efficacy and risks of implementing these approaches to reduce climate change are highly uncertain and likely depend on how they are implemented.

The Geoengineering Modeling Research Consortium (GMRC) was founded to coordinate SCI modeling research and to identify and resolve relevant issues with physical models, especially where existing climate research is unlikely to do so. Here we synthesize 2 years of GMRC meetings and research, and we offer specific recommendations for future model development.

Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) might alleviate some climate risks associated with accumulating greenhouse gases. Reduction of specific process uncertainties relevant to the distribution of aerosol in a turbulent stratospheric wake is necessary to support informed decisions about aircraft deployment of this technology. To predict aerosol size distributions we apply microphysical parameterizations of nucleation, condensation and coagulation to simulate an aerosol plume generated via injection of calcite powder or sulphate into a stratospheric wake with velocity and turbulence simulated by a three‐dimensional (3D) fluid dynamic calculation. We apply the model to predict the aerosol distribution that would be generated by a propeller wake in the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx). We find that injecting 0.1 g s^‐1 calcite aerosol produces a nearly monodisperse plume and that at the same injection rate, condensable sulphate aerosol forms particles with average radii of 0.1 µm at 3 km downstream. We test the sensitivity of plume aerosol composition, size, and optical depth to the mass injection rate and injection location. Aerosol size distribution depends more strongly on injection rate than injection configuration. Comparing plume properties with specifications of a typical photometer, we find that plumes could be detected optically as the payload flies under the plume. These findings test the relevance of in situ sampling of aerosol properties by the SCoPEx outdoor experiment to enable quantitative tests of microphysics in a stratospheric plume. Our findings provide a basis for developing predictive models of SAI using aerosols formed in stratospheric aircraft wakes.

Expert judgments on solar geoengineering (SG) inform policy decisions and influence public opinions. We performed face-to-face interviews using formal expert elicitation methods with 13 US and 13 Chinese climate experts randomly selected from IPCC authors or supplemented by snowball sampling. We compare their judgments on climate change, SG research, governance, and deployment. In contrast to existing literature that often stress factors that might differentiate China from western democracies on SG, we found few significant differences between quantitative judgments of US and Chinese experts. US and Chinese experts differed on topics, such as desired climate scenario and the preferred venue for international regulation of SG, providing some insight into divergent judgments that might shape future negotiations about SG policy. We also gathered closed-form survey results from 19 experts with >10 publications on SG. Both expert groups supported greatly increased research, recommending SG research funding of ~5% on average (10th–90th percentile range was 1–10%) of climate science budgets compared to actual budgets of <0.3% in 2018. Climate experts chose far less SG deployment in future climate policies than did SG experts.

Stratospheric solar geoengineering (SG) would impact ozone by heterogeneous chemistry. Evaluating these risks and methods to reduce them will require both laboratory and modeling work. Prior model-only work showed that CaCO₃ particles would reduce, or even reverse ozone depletion. We reduce uncertainties in ozone response to CaCO₃ via experimental determination of uptake coefficients and model evaluation. Specifically, we measure uptake coefficients of HCl and HNO₃ on CaCO₃ as well as HNO₃ and ClONO₂ on CaCl₂ at stratospheric temperatures using a flow tube setup and a flask experiment that determines cumulative long-term uptake of HCl on CaCO₃. We find that particle ageing causes significant decreases in uptake coefficients on CaCO₃. We model ozone response incorporating the experimental uptake coefficients in the AER-2D model. With our new empirical reaction model, the global mean ozone column is reduced by up to 3%, whereas the previous work predicted up to 27% increase for the same SG scenario. This result is robust under our experimental uncertainty and many other assumptions. We outline systematic uncertainties that remain and provide three examples of experiments that might further reduce uncertainties of CaCO₃ SG. Finally, we highlight the importance of the link between experiments and models in studies of SG.

Solar Radiation Modification (SRM) reduces the CO₂‐induced change to the mean global hydrological cycle disproportionately more than it reduces the CO₂‐induced increase in mean surface temperature. Thus if SRM were used to offset all CO₂‐induced mean warming, global‐mean precipitation would be less than in an unperturbed climate. Here we show that the mismatch between the mean hydrological effects of CO₂ and SRM may partly be alleviated by spectrally tuning the SRM intervention (reducing insolation at some wavelengths more than others). By concentrating solar dimming at near‐infrared wavelengths, where H₂O has strong absorption bands, the direct effect of CO₂ on the tropospheric energy budget can be offset, which minimizes perturbations to the mean hydrological cycle. Idealized cloud‐resolving simulations of radiative‐convective equilibrium confirm that spectrally‐tuned SRM can simultaneously maintain mean surface temperature and precipitation at their unperturbed values even as large quantities of CO₂ are added to the atmosphere.

Solar geoengineering (SG) entails using technology to modify the Earth's radiative balance to offset some of the climate changes caused by long‐lived greenhouse gases. Parametric insurance, which delivers payouts when specific physical indices (such as wind speed) cross predefined thresholds, was recently proposed by two of us as a compensation mechanism for SG with the potential to ease disagreements about the technology and to facilitate cooperative deployment; we refer to this proposal as reduced‐rate climate risk insurance for solar geoengineering, or ‘RCG’. Here we probe the plausibility of RCG by exploring the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative (PCRAFI), a sovereign risk pool providing parametric insurance coverage against tropical cyclones and earthquakes/tsunamis to Pacific island countries since 2013. Tracing the history of PCRAFI and considering regional views on insurance as compensation necessitates reconfiguring RCG in a way that shifts the focus away from bargaining between developed and developing countries toward bargaining among developed countries. This revised version of RCG is challenged by an assumption of broad developed country support for sovereign climate insurance in the developing world, but it also better reflects the underlying incentive structure and distribution of power.

Expanding decarbonization efforts beyond the power sector are contingent on cost-effective production of energy carriers, like H2, with near-zero life-cycle carbon emissions. Here, we assess the levelized cost of continuous H2 supply (95% availability) at industrial-scale quantities (100 tonnes/day) in 2030 from integrating commodity technologies for solar photovoltaics, electrolysis, and energy storage. Our approach relies on modeling the least-cost plant design and operation that optimize component sizes while adhering to hourly solar availability, production requirements, and component inter-temporal operating constraints. We apply the model to study H2 production costs spanning the continental United States and, through extensive sensitivity analysis, explore system configurations that can achieve $2.5/kg levelized costs or less for a range of plausible 2030 technology projections at high-irradiance locations. Notably, we identify potential sites and system configurations where PV-electrolytic H2 could substitute natural gas-derived H2 at avoided CO2 costs (%$120/ton), similar to the cost of deploying carbon capture and sequestration

Stratospheric aerosol geoengineering is a proposal to artificially thicken the layer of reflective aerosols in the stratosphere and it is hoped that this may offer a means of reducing average climate changes. However, previous work has shown that it could not perfectly offset the effects of climate change and there is a concern that it may worsen climate impacts in some regions. One approach to evaluating this concern is to test whether the absolute magnitude of climate change at each location is significantly increased (exacerbated) or decreased (moderated)relative to the period just preceding deployment. In prior work it was found that halving warming with an idealized solar constant reduction would substantially reduce climate change overall, exacerbating change in a small fraction of places. Here, we test if this result holds for a more realistic representation of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering using the data from the geoengineering large ensemble (GLENS). Using a linearized scaling of GLENS we find that halving warming with stratospheric aerosols moderates important climate hazards in almost all regions. Only 1.3% of land area sees exacerbation of change in water availability, and regions that are exacerbated see wetting not drying contradicting the common assumption that solar geoengineering leads to drying in general. These results suggest that halving warming with stratospheric aerosol geoengineering could potentially reduce key climate hazards substantially while avoiding some problems associated with fully offsetting warming.

There are large uncertainties in the potential impacts of solar radiation modification (SRM) and in how these impacts depend on the way SRM is deployed. One open question concerns trade‐offs between latitudinal profiles of insolation reduction and climate response. Here, a moist energy balance model is used to evaluate several SRM proposals, providing fundamental insight into how the insolation reduction profile affects the climate response. The optimal SRM profile is found to depend on the intensity of the intervention, as the most effective profile for moderate SRM focuses the reduction at high latitudes, whereas the most effective profile for strong SRM is tropically amplified. The effectiveness of SRM is also shown to depend on when it is applied, an important factor to consider when designing SRM proposals. Using an energy balance model allows us to provide physical explanations for these results while also suggesting future avenues of research with comprehensive climate models.

States will disagree about deployment of solar geoengineering, technologies that would reflect a small portion of incoming sunlight to reduce risks of climate change, and most disagreements will be grounded in conflicting interests. States that object to deployment will have many options to oppose it, so states favouring deployment will have a powerful incentive to meet their objections. Objections rooted in opposition to the anticipated unequal consequences of deployment may be met through compensation, yet climate policy is inhospitable to compensation via liability. We propose that multilateral parametric climate risk insurance might be a useful tool to facilitate agreement on solar geoengineering deployment. With parametric insurance, predetermined payouts are triggered when climate indices deviate from set ranges. We suggest that states favouring deployment could underwrite reduced-rate parametric climate insurance. This mechanism would be particularly suited to resolving disagreements based on divergent judgments about the outcomes of proposed implementation. This would be especially relevant in cases where disagreements are rooted in varying levels of trust in climate model predictions of solar geoengineering effectiveness and risks. Negotiations over the pricing and terms of a parametric risk pool would make divergent judgments explicit and quantitative. Reduced-rate insurance would provide a way for states that favour implementation to demonstrate their confidence in solar geoengineering by underwriting risk transfer and ensuring compensation without the need for attribution. This would offer a powerful incentive for states opposing implementation to moderate their opposition.