Carlos Solis
Marine cloud brightening could locally reduce warming and help protect vulnerable ecosystems from extreme heat.
Led by Professor Hugh Coe at the University of Manchester, the team is running experiments in a three-story stainless steel cloud chamber. There they are testing whether seawater droplets created by specialized sprayers can brighten clouds so the clouds reflect more sunlight. They’re also running computer models and building devices to produce uniformly sized droplets.
The research is part of the REFLECT project, which is funded by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) under the “Exploring Climate Cooling” program.
ARIA’s goal is to gather independent scientific data to determine whether these approaches would work and whether they could be made safe and controllable. Mark Sims, ARIA’s program lead, stresses that cutting CO2 emissions remains the only sustainable way out of the climate crisis, but the transition is moving too slowly to protect many regions from the worst impacts of warming. He says current discussions about cooling methods are paralyzed by a lack of objective data, and ARIA’s program aims to fill that gap.
Field trials planned, but not before 2028
The researchers say they are currently studying how droplets behave in the chamber, testing different spraying methods, and comparing the results with their models. They have also begun engaging stakeholders in coastal communities that could potentially host field trials.
The team emphasizes that no test site has been selected yet and that they do not plan to carry out real outdoor experiments before 2028. Even after that, all field work would have to pass independent ARIA oversight, a safety assessment, and co-development requirements with the communities. As planned, any external tests would be small, time-limited, and tightly supervised; they would use only seawater and mimic natural processes of sea spray and marine film formation. Preliminary trials, if approved, would involve short fog displacements over the sea, and the effect would disappear within 24 hours.
The REFLECT team says the work is not a substitute for cutting emissions but is meant to build a scientific, transparent database to guide decisions about temporary measures to protect vulnerable areas from extreme heat.
Based on reporting by The Independent
Photo: Unsplash
