CIN Stories 2: The Interdisciplinary Work within Climate Intervention

Last month, we shared the stories of three members of the Climate Intervention Network (CIN) who attended last year’s early career researcher convening in Helsinki, Finland. These researchers highlighted their motivations to work in a space that can at times feel daunting and siloed, the fascinating work they’re doing, and how building community has bolstered their understanding of and passion for their work. 

Here, we share the stories of four more community members who are answering complex questions from regions across the globe. Learn more about their work across both the physical and social sciences — journeys that have taken them to the Arctic, music festivals, and more. 

Four More Voices from the Network

Cody Skahan

Cody, an anthropologist by training, had never heard about the climate intervention space until attending the Arctic Circle Assembly in 2023 and crossing paths with members of CIN from Operaatio Arktis and DSG. Upon learning about the field from them, he found it promising and full of clearer paths forward than other areas of climate research he had encountered. From there, Cody made the decision to pursue research in this field, enrolling in a PhD at the University of Oxford. Since beginning his work, Cody has taken full advantage of the community and opportunities around him, connecting with two fellow CIN members, Albert Van Wijngaarden and Chloé Colomer, to apply for funding from the UK ARIA Exploring Climate Cooling program.

The group was successful and is now in the process of creating a toolkit to guide collaborative public engagement on climate intervention, especially in Arctic and UK contexts. They hope the guidance will provide engineering teams, physicists, and others with the resources required to meaningfully engage with communities. Cody notes that having a strong network through CIN provides him the confidence and drive to stay in this field, which at times can be intimidating and isolating.

Minette Iris Moting Madefo

Iris is a PhD student with the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town who, upon learning about the regional disparities in deployment scenarios of solar radiation modification (SRM), felt a responsibility to engage. As an African researcher who understands her continent’s vulnerability to climate change, she found it challenging to look away from the issue. 

“I feel a deep sense of duty to be part of this global effort to ensure that our voices, experiences, and climate realities are part of this global conversation.” - Minette Iris Moting Madefo

Iris’ work examines changes in Africa’s projected population exposure to extreme temperatures and precipitation under Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI). Specifically, she examines the differences that using different aerosol materials would bring, including sulfur dioxide, alumina, calcite, and diamond. Thus far, her research has found that SAI could significantly reduce drought frequency, duration, and severity in some countries, particularly those in West and Central Africa.

Annelot Broerze

Annelot’s academic career has spanned everything from fundamental physics to qualitative interviews at music festivals. Characterizing herself as an interdisciplinarian at heart, Annelot sought to utilize her physics degree to work on a more applied problem: climate intervention. Now working toward a PhD at TU Delft, her research focuses on marine cloud brightening (MCB), one method of SRM in which increased reflectivity of low-lying clouds could reflect sunlight to create cooling effects. Through modelling work, she is interrogating how sea salts would disperse through the sky, how they reach clouds, and what the effects on the clouds are. At the same time, she is also examining the public’s perception and engagement towards MCB and climate intervention.

To gauge public perceptions, Annelot conducted interviews with over 400 individuals at a music festival in the Netherlands, asking about their perspectives on climate change, climate action, and climate intervention. She left feeling surprised by the interviewees' high levels of worry about climate change and their high levels of support and openness for outdoor climate intervention research — two viewpoints that seemed to intersect.

Burgess Langshaw Power

Burgess began his career in the Canadian government, where he noticed there was very little knowledge and capacity to discuss climate intervention. Seeing an opportunity to fill this gap, Burgess decided to undertake a PhD focused on polycentric governance of climate intervention at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo. 

What is polycentric governance? Burgess describes it as “considering governance not as a single thing from the top-down like the United Nations, but rather a combination of international, subnational, and transnational, or informal, governance.” His belief is that all of these elements, combined together, could create effective governance of climate interventions that prioritizes justice and equity.

Burgess notes that the knowledge gap he saw in the Canadian government is not unique, but fairly representative of nations across the world. 

“There’s this enormous gap given how pressing these issues are and just how little preparedness there is for such a complex and urgent issue.” - Burgess Langshaw Power 

The breadth of the work being undertaken by these four PhD candidates—spanning anthropology, atmospheric physics, climate science, and governance—reflects the interdisciplinarity of the Climate Intervention Network. Annelot recognized the value of having all of these disciplines in the same room: “we have so many questions that we should solve together and it’s therefore really necessary to engage with each other.” Not only must the next generation of researchers continue to collect data on the impacts of proposed interventions, but a greater understanding of governance, perceptions, and engagement processes is also essential. 

If you are an early career professional tackling similar issues, join CIN now.