Project goal

Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) is a quick and imperfect way to cool the climate. Given the unique risk profile of SAI, any global program, if ever deployed, will be one of the closest monitored geophysical experiments in history. The goal of this project is to make a first-ever estimate at the learning rate of SAI efficacy. Put differently, the work aims to answer the question: how fast will the uncertainty regarding SAI efficacy decline given new observations of the future? This work can inform future SAI policy discussions by answering the question: if we start SAI deployments, how quickly can we learn if SAI is lowering temperatures in the way we expect it to? How quickly will we be able to rule out worst-case scenarios? And what novel measurements might we need to further constrain SAI efficacy?

Collaborators

B. B. Cael and David Keith.