Britain is set to approve funding of up to £50 million for experiments to dim sunlight in a bid to limit climate change
Scientists are planning on ‘dimming the Sun’ in a bid to curb global warming.
The UK government is set to announce funding of up to £50m of funding for Sun-dimming experiments in the coming weeks, the Telegraph reports.
The controversial technology aims to reflect sunshine back into the atmosphere, which could help to temporarily limit rising temperatures.
It comes as the National Environment Research Council (NERC) announced on April 3 that it will invest £10 million of new funding to study these solar radiation management schemes (SRM).
According to Professor Mark Symes, the programme director for the Government’s advanced research and invention funding agency, known as Aria, there would be “small controlled outdoor experiments on particular approaches”.
These experiments could include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere or brightening clouds to reflect sunlight.
Prof Symes told the Telegraph: “We will be announcing who we have given funding to in a few weeks and when we do so we will be making clear when any outdoor experiments might be taking place.
“One of the missing pieces in this debate was physical data from the real world. Models can only tell us so much.
“Everything we do is going to be safe by design. We’re absolutely committed to responsible research, including responsible outdoor research.
“We have strong requirements around the length of time experiments can run for and their reversibility and we won’t be funding the release of any toxic substances to the environment.”
Last year was the hottest year on record, with 2024 becoming the first year for average temperatures to exceed the threshold of 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures. January 2025 was also the warmest on record, with average global temperatures hitting 13.23C, and 1.75C above pre-industrial levels.
The 1.5C threshold is a target established in the Paris Agreement in 2015 where 195 parties pledged to tackle climate change. In a world within the 1.5C threshold, experts say that many of the deadliest effects of climate change – extreme heat, food scarcity, and insect-borne diseases – are reduced.
Greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, are thrown into the atmosphere by human activities and are key drivers of climate change. Scientists are increasingly worried that carbon dioxide levels aren’t falling fast enough to prevent catastrophic global warming, with the collapse of ocean currents and giant ice sheets becoming a looming threat.
“The uncomfortable truth is that our current warming trajectory makes a number of such tipping points distinctly possible over the next century,” Prof Symes told the Guardian. “This has driven increased interest in approaches that might actively cool the world in a short timeframe in order to avoid those tipping points.”
The experiments therefore aim to provide “critical” data needed to properly assess the potential of the Sun-dimming technology.
One major area of research is SRM, which includes Stratospheric Aerosol Injection, where tiny particles are released into the stratosphere from airplanes and reflect light back into space.
Another potential solution is Marine Cloud Brightening, in which boats would release sea-salt particles into the sky to increase clouds’ ability to reflect sunlight. A third idea is seeding cirrus clouds in the upper atmosphere to allow more heat to escape into space.
However, the topic of geoengineering – the deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the Earth’s climate system – remains controversial amongst scientists, as some argue that these techniques could have serious unintended consequences on things like food production.
According to Prof Symes, no “toxic substances” would be released into the environment from the outdoor experiments.
Alongside outdoor trials, Aria will fund modelling studies, indoor tests, climate monitoring and research into public attitudes towards geoengineering.
