Exploring Climate Cooling
Motivated by the possibility of encountering damaging climate tipping points, and backed by £56.8m, this programme aims to transparently explore – under rigorous oversight – whether any climate cooling approaches that have been proposed as potential options to delay or avert such tipping points could ever be feasible, scalable, and safe.
Programme oversight + governance
We’re committed to responsible stewardship, transparency, accountability + good governance. All funded research in this programme must comply with the following governance principles:
- Deliver valuable + transformational knowledge. We aim to select and design for research that will address the most pressing critical scientific questions surrounding approaches for actively cooling the climate.
- Minimise risk. All experiments should be designed to reduce direct risk as far as possible.
- Engage with, and respect key communities.
- Communicate proactively and be transparent, open, and honest at both the programme and project level, including around levels and sources of funding, intentions, how the research is conducted, outputs, and impacts.
- Be cognisant of the broader implications of research + integrate systems thinking into research on approaches for actively cooling the climate.
- Learn, adapt and be responsive. Success will require a willingness to adapt to lessons learned during the programme and to changing circumstances.
Oversight Committee
To ensure rigorous and responsible governance, this programme benefits from an independent Oversight Committee composed of international experts and chaired by Piers Forster. The Committee advises ARIA leadership and plays a crucial role in scrutinising outdoor experiment plans, providing expert recommendations, and may advise against funding experiments unless certain modifications are made. While ultimate funding decisions rest with ARIA, the Oversight Committee has the authority to comment publicly and independently on experiment funding decisions and on other matters related to the programme and the wider field.
The committee focuses on:
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Supporting effective oversight of the programme's outdoor experiments and guiding transparent communication of findings.
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Shaping international norms and standards for the responsible governance of such experiments.
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Contributing constructively to the wider international discussion on potential governance mechanisms for climate cooling approaches.
Learn more about the Committee's remit, members, and work here.
Read the Oversight Committee’s note on the announcement of the Exploring Climate Cooling projects, published 7 May 2025, here.
Meet the Oversight Committee
Our independent oversight committee brings together international experts in climate science, climate engineering, ethics, and governance. Together, this group is supporting the effective oversight and governance of outdoor experiments, and is helping to shape international norms and responsible global standards for Earth cooling approaches.
Piers Forster
Chair
Piers Forster is a highly cited atmospheric scientist with over 30 years of experience researching the causes and impacts of climate change, as well as mitigation and adaptation approaches and their connection to national and international climate policy. He is founding Director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures and Professor of Physical Climate Change at the University of Leeds.
Jessica Seddon
Secretary
Dr. Jessica Seddon’s work on environmental governance focuses on how new sources of data can be used to enable new (more sustainable) ways of interacting with the environment around us. She is currently Senior Fellow and Director of the Deitz Family Initiative on Environment and Global Affairs at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs and a co-founder of The Institutional Architecture Lab.
Arunabha Ghosh
Member
Dr Arunabha Ghosh is an internationally recognised public policy expert, author, columnist, and institution builder. He is the founder-CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, and has led CEEW to the top ranks as one of Asia's leading policy research institutions and among the world’s 20 best climate think-tanks.
Nana Klutse
Member
Prof. Nana Ama Browne Klutse is a distinguished Ghanaian known for her expertise in climate modelling, climate change impacts, adaptation, and mitigation strategies, particularly in Africa. She is a professor, researcher and Head of the Department of Physics at the University of Ghana and contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the Vice Chair of the Working Group I.
Jack Stilgoe
Member
Dr Jack Stilgoe is a professor in science and technology studies at University College London, where he researches the governance of emerging technologies.
Shuchi Talati
Member
Dr. Shuchi Talati is a climate technology governance expert and founder of The Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering (DSG). DSG is a nonprofit organisation working towards just and inclusive deliberation about research and potential use of solar geoengineering.
Jan McDonald
Jan McDonald is Professor of Environmental and Climate Law at the University of Tasmania, Australia. Jan’s research explores the legal frameworks required to responsibly govern the research, development and deployment of both solar radiation management and marine carbon dioxide removal technologies.
Funded projects
In Exploring Climate Cooling, we're funding 22 research teams uniting specialists across diverse disciplines
FAQs
Check out the most frequently asked questions around this programme