As a climate scientist working on solar geoengineering, I was struck by Raymond Pierrehumbert and Michael Mann’s call to defund the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) research programme (The UK’s gamble on solar geoengineering is like using aspirin for cancer, 12 March).
Given current emission projections, it is likely that the world will reach 2C of warming. The only potential tool we have to reduce temperatures on a short timescale is solar geoengineering. It is necessary to reduce emissions, but once we reach net zero, global temperatures only stabilise, and the melting of glaciers and sea level rise will continue. While it is possible to remove carbon from the atmosphere, it remains slow and expensive for now.
