The Marine Cloud Brightening Project: An atmospheric intervention research program

The U.S. National Academies of Science and the British Royal Society have both concluded that the two forms of solar radiation management that most feasibly could be used to offset climate warming are stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) and marine cloud brightening (MCB). The research needed to quantify the potential efficacy of SAI and MCB, exactly how they will affect the climate system and society, and the mechanism and cost of deployment has yet to be sufficiently undertaken in order to make informed policy decisions. Here we describe the Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB) project, which is a collaborative effort of the University of Washington, the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), the Department of Energy (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Research Laboratory (PNNL), the NGO SilverLinings and a group of unaffiliated retired engineers. This project is researching the technical and scientific feasibility of MCB as a mechanism to cool climate, and aims to quantify the local to regional climate effects that would be realized by MCB deployment. It includes five components: I. Development of aerosol technology & aerosol delivery to marine clouds; II. The study of aerosol/cloud interactions; III. The study of MCB climate impacts; IV. Work on human systems & social science associated with MCB; and V. Programmatic operations.