Climate Reflections: The SRM360 Podcast

2024 was the hottest year on record. Could that change how policymakers think about SRM? How might the new administration in the US approach SRM? Do experts think countries will effectively develop international SRM regulations? We discuss a recent paper examining the topic, and find that the outlook is not optimistic. We also discuss another recent study which found that although SAI would cause some deaths, implementing SAI could still save hundreds of thousands of lives for every 1 degree C of cooling, thanks to its reduction in climate change-caused heat-related deaths. Finally, we explore a new book chapter on Cirrus cloud thinning, and answer a question from our listeners.

To discuss the latest SRM news, Climate Reflections Host Pete Irvine is joined by Blaž Gasparini, a Senior Scientist at the University of Vienna in Austria, and an expert in Cirrus clouds, Claudia Wieners, an Assistant Professor in Climate Physics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands studying the impacts of Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) on Atlantic circulation, and Shuchi Talati, a climate technology governance expert and founder and Executive Director of the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering.

Climate Reflections is a production of SRM360, a non-profit knowledge hub supporting an informed, evidence-based discussion of sunlight reflection methods. For more information and the latest research on SRM, visit SRM360.org.

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On June 15th, 1991, the densely populated island of Luzon in the Philippines awoke to an explosion that would turn out to be the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. Mount Pinatubo had erupted, releasing a huge cloud of volcanic ash, hundreds of kilometers across and 40 kilometers high. As satellites tracked the ash cloud spread around the globe several times over, atmospheric scientists noted that over the next year, the Earth's global temperature had decreased by as much as half a degree Celsius. The eruption had added around 17 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, a layer of the atmosphere between 10 and 50 kilometers above the surface. And this sulfur had gone on to form countless tiny aerosol particles. In the lower atmosphere, these particles would have been washed out in days, but because the stratosphere is dry and stable, these particles lasted for several years, reflecting light, and cooling the Earth. 

Could the climate cooling effect of this eruption be replicated as a way to help tackle climate change? In this episode, we focus on the basics of the sunlight reflection method known as Stratospheric Aerosol Injection, or SAI, an SRM idea that looks like it could offer a practical means of halting or even reversing global warming within a few years. What is SAI? What would it take to cool the planet? And who could do it? 

Featuring Dr. Daniele Visioni, an Assistant Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University and Dr. Joshua Horton, a Senior Program Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. 

Climate Reflections is a production of SRM360, a non-profit knowledge hub supporting an informed, evidence-based discussion of sunlight reflection methods. For more information and the latest research on SRM, visit SRM360.org.

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Host Pete Irvine is joined by SRM researchers Lili Xia, Chris Lennard, and Tyler Felgenhauer for a live recording from the American Geophysical Union conference in Washington D.C. They discuss the latest SRM news including: the New York Times article on U.S. efforts to develop an early warning system to detect SRM deployment; Florida senator Ileana Garcia's bill to ban all "weather modification" activities; takeaways from the UNFCCC COP related to SRM; the latest research on the impacts of SAI to human health; the European Commission's chief scientific advisory recommendations on SRM; and more!

Climate Reflections is a production of SRM360, a non-profit knowledge hub supporting an informed, evidence-based discussion of sunlight reflection methods. For more information and the latest research on SRM, visit SRM360.org.

Follow us to stay updated on the latest episodes:
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In our first themed episode of the Climate Reflections podcast, we present many different viewpoints from around the world on the role and risks of sunlight reflection methods (SRM) - proposals to reflect some of the sun's light back to space in order to cool the planet. 

Climate Reflections is a production of SRM360, a non-profit knowledge hub supporting an informed, evidence-based discussion of sunlight reflection methods. For more information and the latest research on SRM, visit SRM360.org.

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For this first News Roundup episode of Climate Reflections, we look back over the entire history of SRM and ahead to its future. For this, we are joined by 4 great guests with extensive experience working on this topic: 

• Inés Camilloni, a Professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires and a Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental panel on climate change’s working group on physical science. 
• Govindasamy Bala, a Professor at the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science who has worked on SRM longer than almost any other researcher, publishing his first article on this topic 24 years ago. 
• Oliver Morton, the Senior and Briefings editor at the Economist who has written extensively about SRM, including in his excellent 2016 book “The Planet Remade”  
• Cynthia Scharf, a senior fellow at the International Center for Future Generations, where she leads their work on SRM. She was previously senior strategy director for the Carnegie Climate Governance (C2G) Initiative, and served in the Office of the UN Secretary-General as the head of strategic climate communications. 

Climate Reflections is a production of SRM360, a non-profit knowledge hub supporting an informed, evidence-based discussion of sunlight reflection methods. For more information and the latest research on SRM, visit SRM360.org.

Follow us to stay updated on the latest episodes:
LinkedIn: SRM360-org
Twitter/X: SRM360_org
YouTube: SRM360org
Bluesky: SRM360

And subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts!

Climate Reflections: An SRM360 podcast explores the science, ethics, and our current understanding of Sunlight Reflection Methods (SRM), also known as solar radiation modification, or solar geo-engineering. SRM are a set of methods being researched to reflect some sunlight back to space in order to cool the planet. This podcast will present the views of a wide range of experts working in this field and explore what we know, what we don't know, and the issues SRM raises. 

We’ll have two episodes a month. One will be our monthly News Roundup, where you’ll hear about all the SRM news over the last month, and the other will be our monthly themed podcast, where we’ll explore a wide range of SRM related topics.

Learn more at srm360.org.

Climate Reflections is a production of SRM360, a non-profit knowledge hub supporting an informed, evidence-based discussion of sunlight reflection methods. For more information and the latest research on SRM, visit SRM360.org.

Follow us to stay updated on the latest episodes:
LinkedIn: SRM360-org
Twitter/X: SRM360_org
YouTube: SRM360org
Bluesky: SRM360

And subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts!