Exploring Climate Cooling
This £56.8m programme aims to build a robust evidence base to explore – with independent oversight – if climate cooling approaches could ever be feasible, scalable, safe, and governable.
Our goal
To gather critical missing scientific data to better understand potential climate cooling approaches and their impacts.
By investing in careful research today, we can build the fundamental scientific knowledge to make wiser, better-informed decisions about our future.
Why this programme
Climate change could cause global temperatures to increase by several degrees by the end of the century, which could lead to climate tipping points – abrupt changes in the Earth system that, if crossed, could have devastating and essentially irreversible consequences.
We don’t know when a tipping point might happen, or how long it would take to feel the effects if it did; significant uncertainties remain regarding the probability and potential impacts of any given tipping point.
There is no substitute for decarbonisation, which is the only sustainable way to lower the chances of such tipping points and their effects from occurring.
Our current warming trajectory already makes a number of tipping points distinctly possible over the next century.
If faced with a climate tipping point, our understanding of the options available remains limited. This knowledge gap has driven increased interest in whether there are approaches (also known as “climate interventions”) that could actively reduce temperatures globally or regionally over shorter timescales.
Yet, in the absence of robust data, we currently have little understanding of whether such interventions are scientifically feasible, and what their full range of impacts might be. This programme aims to gather such data so that we can better understand these approaches and their potential effects.
How we’re doing it
As a publicly funded, non-profit agency, our research efforts are grounded in transparency, responsible stewardship, and a commitment to broad public benefit.
The programme will explore more than one potential climate cooling approach in order to be comprehensive and to allow a range of potential options to be explored thoroughly and objectively.
Successful outcomes from this programme include assessing the feasibility and risks of these approaches, as well as setting the standard for how research in this field can be conducted responsibly and inclusively. The programme will not fund, and does not support, the deployment of any climate cooling approaches.
Read the accessible version of the programme thesis
Explore the funded projects
We're funding 22 research teams uniting specialists across diverse disciplines – from atmospheric physics, chemistry, and climate modelling to chemical engineering, systems analysis, and oceanography, alongside crucial expertise in governance and ethics – reflecting the programme's holistic approach.
Exploring Climate Cooling: a year of progress
Programme Director Mark Symes provides a status update on our funded projects and the importance of building a scientific evidence base on climate cooling.
“Decarbonisation is the only sustainable route out of the climate crisis. However, decarbonisation is not happening quickly enough to protect many parts of the world from the worst effects of global heating. Current debates around climate cooling are paralysed by a lack of objective data, and venture-backed companies are now operating in this space, outside of any governance framework. We believe society deserves informed answers on a topic of this consequence. ARIA’s Exploring Climate Cooling programme is providing the objective evidence base the world needs to make safe, informed decisions about these proposed interventions – so that, if the world ever faces a decision on climate cooling approaches, it will be made with rigorous scientific evidence.”
Mark Symes
Programme Director
Programme Directors
Our Programme Directors are exceptional scientists and engineers with the curiosity to explore uncharted territory.
How we work
We seek out exceptional scientists and engineers and empower them with the resources and autonomy to turn their ideas into reality.