Funder: Simons Foundation
Due Dates: October 6, 2026 (LOI) | February 17, 2027 (Invited full proposal)
Funding Amounts: Up to $1.5 million over three years; eligible current awardee collaborations may request up to $1 million annually for three years
Summary: Supports international research on materials, cloud processes, and atmospheric modeling to close fundamental knowledge gaps about solar radiation management.
Key Information: Social science research and field experiments involving aerosol release are outside the program’s scope.
Description
The Simons Foundation supports an international collaborative research program to improve understanding of solar radiation management (SRM), approaches designed to modify Earth’s radiative balance and cool the planet. The program seeks evidence to inform decisions about potential benefits and environmental and societal risks, including stratospheric warming, ozone depletion, and rainfall changes.
Priorities include environmentally benign materials for stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) and cirrus cloud thinning (CCT), laboratory characterization of their interactions with light and atmospheric constituents, and approaches to minimize cirrus formation, including aircraft-induced clouds. The program also supports modeling near-field atmospheric turbulence (less than 100 kilometers), incorporating improved aerosol and turbulence representations into global models, and assessing novel materials’ regional and global impacts. Individual investigators and small teams may apply, with priority given to projects not well supported by existing national programs.
