U.K. to Fund ‘Small-Scale’ Outdoor Geoengineering Tests

A British science agency will provide 57 million pounds, or about $75 million, for researchers to examine ideas for artificially cooling the planet — including outdoor experiments to determine whether any of those ideas could actually work.

The announcement, by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, or ARIA, is among the largest single infusions of money to date toward research into “solar geoengineering”: the notion of injecting particles into the air to deflect some of the sun’s radiation back into space with the goal of reducing the Earth’s temperature.

The government initiative is focused on testing several types of solar geoengineering. Those approaches could include injecting aerosols, such as sulfur dioxide, into the stratosphere or shooting sea-salt aerosols into low-lying marine clouds to reflect more sunlight away from the Earth.

Frank Keutsch, a geoengineering researcher at Harvard, said that as far as he knew, it was the first time that a government has called for proposals for outdoor experiments.

The funding comes as the effects of climate change are becoming increasingly destructive. Last month was the warmest August on record, as measured by average global land and ocean surface temperatures, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Heat-related deaths are rising around the world. The United States suffered through 28 billion-dollar disasters last year, three times as many as a decade before. Heat waves, wildfires and other calamities have become increasingly common across Europe and the rest of the world.

And yet, the greenhouse emissions that are driving climate change keep rising as humans continue to burn coal, oil and gas.