Marine Cloud Brightening Project

Clouds reflect sunlight back to space. The more water droplets inside a cloud, the more bright it is, the longer it lasts, and the more sunlight it bounces back to space. If enough sunlight is reflected, these brighter, longer-lasting clouds producing cooling effects locally and globally. As such, it is a potential approach to mitigate global warming and its most dangerous effects. Yet, there’s still a lot left to learn. The Marine Cloud Brightening Project (MCBP) is an open, international collaboration of atmospheric scientists and other experts dedicated to advancing our understanding of cloud responses to aerosol particles. MCP seeks to advance science in this area by developing research frameworks and associated technologies that will allow the scientific community to conduct crucial experiments. PARC, University of Washington’s technical partner in this work, is refining a patented spray technology to develop nozzles capable of emitting particles at a sufficient quantity and velocity to conduct cloud brightening field experiments. These experiments will be tightly controlled efforts designed to get particles to “loft” high up in the sky and for long enough they can encounter clouds.