Reflective at the 2025 Degrees Global Forum

Stratospheric aerosol injection, if ever implemented, would have a global impact. That’s why it’s so important we work to build a globally inclusive and scientifically informed dialogue about geoengineering interventions, sharing perspectives that aren’t normally represented in scientific conferences.

With that in mind, my colleagues and I had the privilege to attend the 2025 Degrees Global Forum last month in Cape Town, South Africa. It’s a unique event, aiming to convene a wide variety of people from around the world to discuss everything from science to the social impact of geoengineering. The event is organized by the Degrees Initiative, an NGO that helps developing countries, particularly the global south, understand and evaluate sunlight reflection interventions into the global and local climate. Reflective is a proud partner to Degrees and expects to continue collaborating into the future.

Reflective had a strong presence at DGF this year. Here is a quick rundown:

I helped staff the Reflective booth where participants were able to use our new Simulator and learn more about our recent research funding announcement. As a data scientist who has been supporting new feature development like custom injection modeling for temperature and water impacts and significance hatching, it was rewarding to show our work to so many people and receive feedback.

My colleague Alistair, a Scientist at Reflective, also helped launch an early version of Reflective’s CloudHub, a new service we’re prototyping to help global researchers access and analyze comprehensive climate data on cloud infrastructure instead of local computers and high-performance computing (HPC) systems.

Reflective also joined and supported an interactive session organized independently by Jared Farley from Cornell and Prof. Babatunde Abiodun at the University of Cape Town, who used our Simulator as the foundation for a strategic game. Five teams representing different continents competed to design an SAI deployment scenario that could earn the most points for consensus-building.

Finally my colleagues Dakota, Alistair, and Reflective scientific advisor Dan Visioni spoke on a panel together, about what the first decade of an SAI deployment might look like. Dakota also gave a brief talk introducing attendees to Reflective and our mission. (Pictured below)

On a more personal note, it was inspiring to hear such a wide range of perspectives and to meet so many wonderful people committed to addressing the impacts of climate change responsibly.

It was particularly motivating to talk with so many African scientists and students, who seemed pleasantly surprised to discover that all our resources are freely accessible to the public, with no registration required for the Simulator and no cost for CloudHub usage.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth to say Hello! If you didn’t get a chance: feel free to get in touch, and check out the Simulator on your home computer. Until next time!

All photos licensed CC BY 4.0. Attribution to The Degrees Initiative/Sasika Wegner