"The world is unlikely to hit the targets necessary to avoid catastrophic levels of climate change. Some think that as a last resort, we may need to temporarily cool the planet by modifying the skies. It wouldn’t solve the problem, but it might buy us time. This technology, called solar geoengineering, is so controversial that some experts think it could lead to global war. But just in case, a team of researchers at Harvard is planning to conduct one of the first outdoor geoengineering experiments."

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Lenferna, Alex; Russotto, Rick; Tan, Amanda; Gardiner, Stephen; Ackerman, Thomas (2017): Relevant Climate Response Tests for Stratospheric Aerosol Injection. A Combined Ethical and Scientific Analysis. In Earth's Future. DOI: 10.1002/2016EF000504.

"In this paper, we focus on stratospheric sulfate injection as a geoengineering scheme, and provide a combined scientific and ethical analysis of climate response tests, which are a subset of outdoor tests that would seek to impose detectable and attributable changes to climate variables on global or regional scales. We assess the current state of scientific understanding on the plausibility and scalability of climate response tests. Then we delineate a minimal baseline against which to consider whether certain climate response tests would be relevant for a deployment scenario. Our analysis shows that some climate response tests, such as those attempting to detect changes in regional climate impacts, may not be deployable in time periods relevant to realistic geoengineering scenarios. This might pose significant challenges for justifying SSI deployment overall."

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"Launched this weekend, Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program will investigate the safety of geoengineering as well as its environmental and political implications. Scientists specifically look into a technique of injecting specific particles into Earth’s upper atmosphere to create a barrier that reflects more sunlight away from the atmosphere."

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"Solar Radiation Management (SRM) describes a set of geoengineering techniques that aim to counter human-made climate change by artificially increasing the reflection of heat from sunlight (solar radiation) back into space. Some advocates have started using the term “solar geoengineering” – but these techniques are not related to solar power production."

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