In October, Dr Leonardo Clarke presented his research at a conference of the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment initiative (CORDEX) in Beijing with support from SRMGI (The Degrees Initiative). CORDEX is a major international project for modelling regional climate impacts, under the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP).
Leonardo is PI of the Jamaica Degrees Modelling Fund (DMF) project, which is the world’s first SRM research project in the Caribbean and the first in a small island developing state. The world’s small island states were part of the negotiating group who successfully pushed for the world’s governments to agree a warming limit of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. As things stand, the use of SRM might be the only way to achieve the temperature target but it’s still very unclear whether it would be riskier to use SRM or to allow the planet keep warming. The Jamaica DMF team is trying to shed some light on this by investigating the impacts on the Caribbean of using SRM to hold global temperatures at 1.5C.
