Weather Control & Geoengineering Hackathon
Matt Blythe is one of the organisers of SoTA's Weather Control & Geoengineering Hackathon. He is an angel-investor focusing on technologies that can help us manage our climate.
Dear SoTA,
Last week I attended the Degrees Global Forum in Cape Town where hundreds of climate scientists, policy-makers and other professionals gathered to present and debate research into solar geoengineering.
In brief, here are some of my observations.
There is a small but growing field of climate scientists working hard to model the effects of different approaches to solar geoengineering and improve our understanding of the risks involved, in particular its potential to disrupt regional weather and climate systems.
As the current US administration retreats from climate research, the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) has emerged as the largest individual funder globally of research into solar geoengineering. It is no exaggeration to say that ARIA’s recent decision to fund several small-scale, controlled outdoor experiments is one of the most significant developments in this field to date.
However, several important gaps and challenges await if policymakers decide to progress the concept of solar geoengineering from research and small-scale, outdoor experimentation to larger scale deployment.
First, there is a need to expand our capabilities for atmospheric observation and measurement. Even with current satellites and aircraft, the stratosphere and troposphere (where approaches such as aerosol injection and marine cloud brightening would take place) are under-observed. New, lower cost technologies that can enhance atmospheric data collection are necessary for climate modelling and to rigorously assess the impacts of any outdoor experiments.
Second, current thinking around how different approaches to geoengineering could be scaled up is understandably under-developed and there is likely scope for engineering innovation here.
For example, a leading proponent of stratospheric aerosol injection has suggested modifying or manufacturing large commercial aircraft to inject aerosols in the sub-polar regions. However, the most optimistic timeline for certification, manufacturing and construction of airport infrastructure required to start such a program is a decade.
Given that it will take time to equip policy-makers with the evidence to determine if solar geoengineering is feasible without serious unintended side-effects, finding ways to engineer the rapid scale-up of a viable approach to geoengineering may prove critical in future.
Finally, the almost intractable problem of how solar geoengineering could be sensibly and fairly governed by international organisations and governments in both the Global North and South looms large over this field. The ideal is an international framework that binds all actors to a set of principles for research and experiments, conditions for deployment and mechanisms to address issues that could result.
However, the process of developing international law is lengthy and fraught with difficulty. A better place to start might be the development of legal frameworks in individual nations to create basic governing principles around solar geoengineering that can be tailored to each country’s needs and more easily evolved as our understanding of solar geoengineering deepens. This approach could also help to foster greater public engagement and awareness of the risks associated with solar geoengineering, and ultimately, public consent.
I encourage anyone interested in exploring and thinking critically about any of these challenges to come to the hackathon. You can sign up here.
Yours,
Matt Blythe