8 December 2025 | ZEROGeoengineering.com | “The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present–and is gravely to be regarded.” -1961 President Eisenhower Farewell Address to the American People

“First, the very existence of a portfolio indicates that there is a growing set of potential SRM field experiments being developed by researchers with a track record of atmospheric science field experiments…”

Keith, David W., Riley Duren, and Douglas G. MacMartin. 2014. “Field experiments on solar geoengineering: report of a workshop exploring a representative research portfolio.” Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences 372 (2031): 20140175. doi:10.1098/rsta.2014.0175. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2014.0175.

“The proposed research dealt with three major classes of SRM proposals: marine cloud brightening, stratospheric aerosols and cirrus cloud manipulation.” 

Field research on solar geoengineering is the subject of considerable controversy…

Perhaps the most important distinction is between experiments that seek to understand atmospheric processes and experiments that aim to understand large-scale climate response.

The different types of field experiments, particularly process studies, scaling tests and climate response tests could bridge gaps between scales reducing the uncertainty of large-scale predictions of the risks and efficacy of SRM.

Indeed while the goals are partially scientific, a climate response test may not be meaningfully distinct from a gradual deployment.

Solar geoengineering field experiments involve processes that span the Earth system including domains with very different controlling processes and sources of uncertainty. For example, many experiments involving stratospheric processes may be more appropriately focused on aerosol microphysics and chemistry rather than mesoscale atmospheric mixing, whereas experiments involving boundary layer clouds will likely need to account equally for microscale aerosol cloud interactions as well as mesoscale mixing. 

First, the very existence of a portfolio indicates that there is a growing set of potential SRM field experiments being developed by researchers with a track record of atmospheric science field experiments.

Link To Full Article Field Experiments on Solar Geoengineering

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