On October 16, 2018, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of the United States formed a new committee to study the potential impacts, risks, and technical feasibility of climate change intervention measures such as light reflection. It will also explore the research governance mechanisms of relevant international, national, and sub-national institutions to formulate research agendas and research governance methods for climate intervention strategies that reflect sunlight to cool the Earth.

    Given the threat of global climate change to human survival, how to address this non-traditional security issue has become a focus of attention and an urgent problem to be solved in the world today. Currently, the challenge of limiting the global temperature rise has become even more formidable. The idea of reflecting sunlight, proposed by some scholars, has received increasing attention recently. This idea aims to curb a series of climate changes such as global warming by changing the atmosphere or clouds to reflect sunlight back into space before it reaches the Earth and further warms the planet. Although some teams from the United States and other countries are conducting experiments independently, the U.S. federal government does not have a detailed research agenda and project management charter for this research direction known as solar geoengineering. Therefore, NAS has formed a new committee to manage and formulate a detailed research agenda to address the problems faced by research in this field.

    The new committee will conduct analysis and governance research based on NAS's 2015 report on geoengineering. Its focus will mainly be on atmospheric intervention strategies such as marine cloud brightening, stratospheric aerosol injection, and cirrus cloud modification. The committee will study the potential impacts, risks, and technical feasibility of these intervention measures and explore the research governance mechanisms of relevant international, national, and sub-national institutions.

    The chairperson of NAS's 2015 report committee pointed out that the records in the recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicate that it is very timely to conduct in-depth research on the feasibility of these methods, and it is urgent to mitigate catastrophic climate change. Although climate intervention strategies cannot replace actions to limit greenhouse gas emissions, in the future, it may be necessary to consider some of these intervention measures such as sunlight reflection. However, first, they need to be studied more carefully and the best methods need to be determined.

    The nominations for this committee will be appointed by the end of this year, and the first meeting will be held at the beginning of next year. The new committee will release a report in the first half of 2020.

    (Compiled by Niu Yibo, Lanzhou Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Original Title: National Academies Launching New Study on Sunlight-Reflection Research
Source: http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=10162018&_ga=2.5698483.1870238114.1540256777-746646162.1458527012