San Francisco, CA, Sept. 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reflective, a global non-profit organization working to accelerate the pace of sunlight reflection research, today released its interactive SAI Research Roadmap for Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI). The SAI Research Roadmap is a first-of-its-kind plan for the field, intended to coordinate research and funding to ensure that the most valuable and timely questions are answered in time to support responsible decision-making on SAI.
Last week the UN Environment Programme’s Limiting Overshoot report concluded that exceeding 1.5°C is now unavoidable. Beyond that limit, extreme heat, drought, flooding, and sea level rise intensify. The higher temperatures peak, the greater the risks to people, economies, and ecosystems, and the longer they stay high, the greater the chance of crossing thresholds that cannot be reversed. SAI—releasing reflective sulfate particles into the stratosphere that reflect sunlight back to space—may be the only practical near-term option to mitigate many potentially devastating climate impacts in the coming decades. Decarbonization is essential to address the root cause of climate change, but SAI could temporarily lower global temperatures, reducing both how high temperatures peak and how long the peak lasts, while emissions cuts and carbon removal take effect.
The Roadmap estimates that an informed decision about whether to begin monitored planetary cooling, closely observed and adaptively managed, is possible in 10 years for approximately $370M. These best-case estimates depend on coordinated research, prioritized funding, and a clinical-trial approach in which each phase of research must clear defined criteria before the next phase begins.
"We know SAI can cool the planet. We don't know whether it should ever be used," said Dakota Gruener, CEO of Reflective. "That's not a question anyone can answer responsibly with the evidence we have today and 'more research is needed’ is not a plan. The roadmap gives funders and scientists a shared plan to work from, focusing on what questions matter most, what has to happen first, and what the work will cost."
Building on Reflective’s Uncertainty Database released earlier this year, the SAI Research Roadmap scopes the technical research needed to determine whether SAI is a tool the world could ever use responsibly to temporarily reduce global temperatures. Built for policymakers, funders, and scientists, it shows how the field can narrow the most consequential scientific uncertainties step by step: from understanding how reflective particles behave in the stratosphere, to how different SAI strategies might affect the global climate. Built with input from scientists, researchers and organizations around the globe, each research activity is scoped with a scientific justification, estimated cost, and timeline, so funding and effort can be directed to the most valuable and timely questions.
“The roadmap shows that an informed decision is possible in ten years. But ten years is not a prediction. It’s a choice,” said Gruener. “That timeline is only possible if research is coordinated and funded at pace. Otherwise, governments may face pressure to use sunlight reflection before they have the evidence to judge whether that would be wise.”
Reflective will present and discuss the Roadmap at several events during New York Climate Week, including at Frontiers Science House on September 21st.
The interactive SAI Roadmap can be accessed at roadmap.reflective.org. For more information, please visit www.reflective.org.
About Reflective
Reflective is a global non-profit working to accelerate the pace of sunlight reflection research. Our mission is to equip the world with the data and tools needed to make informed decisions about sunlight reflection, fast enough to matter.
The world needs to understand if, when, or how to pursue sunlight reflection—and informed decision-making requires evidence that does not yet exist. Reflective funds and conducts research on stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) and is building that evidence base by setting the research agenda, expanding access to the tools and data researchers need, and growing a global research community.
Reflective publishes its research openly and takes no position on whether sunlight reflection should be deployed. For more information, and to view the interactive SAI Research Roadmap, visit www.reflective.org.
