Reflective 2025 Annual Report
To view the full annual report, please click here or paste the following URL into your search bar: https://www.reflective.org/2025-annual-report
The sunlight reflection field is at a tipping point.
Climate impacts are accelerating, funding is increasing exponentially, ambitious privately-funded actors are entering the space, and serious discussions about climate intervention are beginning to move mainstream. At the same time, US federal support for climate science – and science generally – is eroding rapidly, policy shifts are hamstringing decarbonization projects, and the foundations of SRM research are in jeopardy.
In the midst of this, it both seems more likely that SRM will be deployed and and more likely that we won’t have sufficient research to support an informed decision. Every year of slow progress or disjointed research increases the chance that, if a climate crisis forces our hand, society will have to decide on SAI deployment blindfolded.
Such an uninformed decision could be disastrous – either through action or inaction. A premature or ill-planned deployment could cause unintended harm, whereas shunning a potentially life-saving intervention due to fear or ignorance could expose billions to climate devastation that might have been mitigated.
More generally, this context demands even more urgency from us at Reflective, the research community, and funders backing this work. And we anticipate that our role — as a rigorous, scientific, and independent non-profit — is only going to become more critical with commercial actors entering the fray.
Reflective is committed to providing a responsible path forward for SRM research.
In 2025, we advanced our core research mission by iterating on our SAI Simulator tool, releasing our first grant, launching the Reflective Cloud Hub, and building out our Uncertainty Database for its January 2026 launch. We also responded quickly to address the needs within the field to preserve and sustain critical scientific capacity amid growing funding and policy uncertainty. As SRM moves further into mainstream discussion, we believe it is increasingly important to elevate clear, credible voices focused on what responsible, decision-relevant research actually requires.
We were also thrilled to grow our team substantially over the past year, and to support critical researchers, infrastructure, and field-building efforts at a moment when public support for climate science became more precarious. In 2026, we’re focusing our work on reducing the uncertainties most critical for informed decisions about SAI and expanding open tools and infrastructure that let researchers everywhere conduct faster, more rigorous work.
We began 2026 by launching our Uncertainty Database, a public tool designed to help prioritize SAI research based on decision relevance, and by releasing a new website to better showcase and connect our work. Building on this foundation, we are preparing to publish an SAI research roadmap that lays out a staged, evidence-driven approach to reducing key uncertainties — including where, and under what conditions, different types of research activities might be appropriate.
As part of this work, we are conducting a feasibility assessment to understand whether a small, carefully scoped outdoor experiment focused on aerosol processes could be done safely, transparently, and responsibly. This assessment will stress-test experiment designs so that specific proposals can anchor rigorous scientific review and early regulatory and community engagement, before any decision to move forward. No decision to conduct an experiment has been taken, and any next steps would depend on external scientific review, regulatory pathways, and meaningful stakeholder engagement.
Alongside this feasibility work, we are investing in the multi-scale modeling and data infrastructure needed to make SAI research faster, more rigorous, and more inclusive. These efforts are essential preparation for informed decision-making and help reduce the risk of poorly designed or poorly governed research elsewhere.
Taken together, these priorities reflect the groundwork required to ensure that, if society is ever forced to confront decisions about SRM under crisis conditions, those decisions are informed by the best available evidence rather than made in the dark. We enter 2026 with urgency, clear-eyed realism about the headwinds ahead, and confidence that Reflective can play a constructive role in advancing responsible, decision-relevant SAI research.
To view the full annual report, please click here or paste the following URL into your search bar: https://www.reflective.org/2025-annual-report