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PhD and MPhil applications in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

CASS HDR (Higher Degree by Research) programs

Graduate research degrees are available in more than 20 disciplines in the arts, humanities and social sciences within the College of Arts & Social Sciences (CASS). Students who wish to undertake a graduate research program at ANU can do so through either a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) or Master of Philosophy (MPhil).

Depending upon your research field, the major component of both research programs is usually a substantial written work (‘thesis’) which investigates a particular subject or issue. A research student works independently under the direction of a primary academic supervisor who forms part of a supervisory panel of academic staff (PhD candidates will have at least three panel members; MPHIL candidates will have at least two).

Prospective students are expected to have an agreed supervisor for their proposed projects before they make a formal application to a CASS research program. See Areas of Research below.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

PhD degrees are expected to submit their thesis for examination within four years (full-time study), or up to eight years part-time. A standard-format thesis is about 80,000 words, and makes a substantial contribution to the relevant scholarly literature, and demonstrates how their research relates to their discipline. It is also possible to submit a PhD in an alternative format (such as a composition, exhibition or other creative work) or by publication upon approval by your supervisory panel and School or Centre. School of Art and Design students normally produced a thesis by creative work (a combination of written exegesis and exhibition).

Master of Philosophy (MPhil)

Program duration for MPhil degrees is up to two years full-time and up to four years part-time. An MPhil thesis is normally limited to 60,000 words.

Applications

College schools and centres sit under two research schools: the Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS) and the Research School of Humanities & the Arts (RSHA).

Each research school has its own PhD and MPHIL programs – the program you apply for depends on the location of the academic staff member who has agreed to supervise your thesis. (See Areas of Research below.)

PhD Programs:

9520XPHD Doctor of Philosophy RSSS

Details and Application: https://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/program/9520XPHD

9552XPHD Doctor of Philosophy RSHA

Details and Application: https://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/program/9552XPHD

MPHIL Programs:

8520XMPHIL Master of Philosophy RSSS

Details and Application: https://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/program/8520XMPHIL

8551XMPHIL Master of Philosophy RSHA

Details and Application: https://programsandcourses.anu.edu.au/program/8551XMPHIL

Areas of Research

Visit the Higher Degree Research page to browse areas of research within CASS. The College also supports interdisciplinary research through the Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Research (ICCR) Program.

Schools and Centres hosting HDR candidates within the College:

Research School of Humanities & the Arts (RSHA):

School of Archaeology and Anthropology

School of Art & Design

School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics

School of Music

Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS):

Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research

Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies

Centre for Social Research and Methods

School of Demography

School of History

School of Philosophy

School of Politics & International Relations

School of Sociology

Minimum entry requirements

Admission to a Doctor of Philosophy program in CASS requires you to have completed an Honours degree at H2A level or above, or equivalent prior studies, such as a Master degree that includes a significant research component. Admission to a Master of Philosophy program in CASS requires you to have completed an Australian Bachelor degree or equivalent, with an overall grade of distinction. 

Generally it is a requirement that you have completed your tertiary studies in the discipline in which you are planning to do research. Please note that exceptions to this may be made with relevant approvals.

At a minimum, all applicants must meet program-specific requirements, and the University's English Language Admission Requirements for Students . Admission to most ANU programs is on a competitive basis. Therefore, meeting all admission requirements does not automatically guarantee entry. 

Commencement

You can apply at any time throughout the year and commence at any time throughout the year (except the end of year University close down period). Please note that deadlines apply for those wanting to be considered for scholarship, as listed below. If you are successful in gaining a scholarship, your scholarship conditions may state that you must start by a particular date. For the main domestic and international scholarships rounds the deadline to commence your program (if successful in gaining a scholarship) is the 31st of March in the following year. If you apply to commence between 1 January and 31 March, please select the Summer session, not Semester 1. This is because many HDR courses run during the Summer session, and you need to be enrolled in the Summer session to take those courses. 

The College requires research students to complete postgraduate/research coursework (the equivalent of one semester full-time study) as part of their degree. Coursework may include training on research methods, ethics and other topics as deemed appropriate by your supervisory panel and School/Centre.

Students enrolled in Higher Degree Research programs are expected to be in attendance for the duration of the program (full-time is 40 hours per week and part-time is 20 hours per week) unless approval is given by the Delegated Authority for the student to be an external PhD degree candidate. On campus candidates will be expected to physically attend ANU as a full time student for 18 months or for a part time student for 24 months. Periods of absence on fieldwork, conference attendance, or in pursuit of the program at another institution do not count towards this attendance period. External candidates must spend a minimum of 4 weeks (consecutive or non-consecutive) per year of the program at ANU.

External candidates must note their periods of time in residence at the ANU in their Annual Reports. The written approval of the appropriate Delegated Authority is required for any variation to these attendance requirements. If you intend on applying to be externally based you should discuss this option with your proposed supervisor (Chair of Panel) and should also note this in your application for admission. Once enrolled, to gain formal approval to be externally based you will need to complete the Application for External Attendance in Research Program .

Preparing for your application

Research proposal.

To be considered for the PhD or MPhil program, prospective students must submit a research (or thesis) proposal for review. When contacting potential supervisors or Graduate Research convenors they will most often expect that you have already prepared a draft research proposal. The proposal is often utilised as an indicator to assess the quality and originality of your ideas, your skills in critical thinking, the projects feasibility, and how the research fits within the School or Centres current research focus and supervision capacity.

The length of the proposal required varies between different Schools and disciplines. As a guide you should aim for between 2 and 5 pages. On advice from your potential supervisor or Graduate Research Convenor you can adjust your initial proposal to fit within the School or Centres guidelines.

Please note that your initial research proposal should be viewed as a starting point or work in progress. In your first year of candidature your research proposal will most often be refined such as through: detailed literature reviews, coursework courses completed, supervisors and other academic colleagues.

In writing your research proposal you should consider:

• The field of research or topic of investigation
• Your primary research objective or central research question to address
• The value of your research and the contribution it will make to your field
• The context and background of your research
• Your research strategy and methods

What should I include in my thesis proposal?

• Title: A precise and informative description of the project. Avoid acronyms and phrases such as "A study of . . ."
• Abstract: A summary of the proposed research (approx 300 words) that includes the key research question or hypothesis, the rationale for the research, and the method to be employed in the study
• Aims & significance: A clearly focused statement of the overall purpose of the proposed research (i.e., why is it important?)
• Research questions and/or hypotheses: the questions that the proposed research will address and/or the hypotheses that will be tested
• Literature review: A preliminary review of the key research that has already been carried out in the field and identification of the gaps in the literature that the proposed research aims to fill
• Methodology: An explanation of what type of data will be required to answer the research questions or test the hypotheses and how the data will be collected and analysed
• Timetable: An indication of how the research will be carried out over the duration of a full-time (3 years for PhD, 2 years for MPhil) or part-time (6 years for PhD, 4 years for MPhil) candidature
• Resources: An indication of the funding that will be required over the course of the candidature (e.g., for fieldwork) as well any special materials or training that may be necessary for the successful completion of the project
• Institutional fit: A statement on why CASS is an appropriate 'home' for the project and an indication of potential supervisors/advisors
• Bibliography: A list of references cited in or relevant to the proposal

Finding a supervisor

Identifying a potential primary supervisor is an important part of any graduate research application. Browse the  Researchers database  to find and contact a potential supervisor to support your application. In most cases the School or Centre location of your potential supervisor will determine which School or Centre within CASS you will reside in.

Please note that once you have found a potential supervisor, any offer of supervision will be subject to you being formally offered admission to the program and meeting any conditions (if applicable).

Application Queries

If you have any technical difficulties when applying you should contact the Admissions Office:

Domestic enquiries | International enquiries

After you have completed your application, the normal timeframe for an outcome is six to eight weeks. If you are applying for an ANU administered scholarship, in order for us to prepare your application as best as possible you should try to aim to submit your application well in advance of the final closing deadline (2 to 3 weeks prior to the deadline). If you are applying for an externally administered scholarship such as the Endeavour Awards, you should apply well in advance of your deadline (try to leave at least 6 to 8 weeks prior to the deadline).

Scholarships

Admission and ANU administered scholarships for HDR degrees are applied for together in the one application for admission (an online form). If you are interested in being considered for an ANU administered scholarship you should indicate this in the relevant sections of the application.

In order to be eligible to be considered for a scholarship you must have the equivalent of H1 honours (first class honours). The Scholarship ranking process is very rigorous, each applicant must first be internally ranked and recommended by their School or Centre for the Scholarship round. Then a central College HDR Scholarship round committee assesses and ranks each applicant. Many criteria are taken into account such as the applicants:

• Academic record (including GPA)
• Research Proposal
• Referee reports & questionnaires
• Publications
• Prizes, Awards and Scholarships
• Relevant professional experience
• English language competency
• Ranking relevant to others in the graduate research field or discipline area

Following this there is often a University level ranking committee that ranks applicants put forward by the College to reach a final ranked list of applicants.

Information on scholarships is available at the  ANU Apply online portal

Domestic students

Domestic research students at ANU are covered by the Fee Offset scholarship offered under the Australian Government Research Training Program ( AGRTP ) where the cost of your tuition is paid by the Commonwealth Government.

Research students are required to pay other associated costs such as the Services and amenities fee .

International students

Information on Fees is available at the ANU Apply online portal . 

HDR transfers

If you are currently undertaking an PhD or MPhil at another Australian university, you will still need to apply to ANU as normal. If you are given an offer of admission before you can be enrolled you will need to provide the following:

• Your program commencement date and withdrawal date (if already withdrawn)
• A statement of your RTS (or AGRTP) consumption to date (in EFTSL - Equivalent Full Time Student Load).
• Dates and durations of any periods of leave (other than recreational leave).
• Whether your enrolment was full or part-time.

Please note these details can be obtained from your university administration.

So we can determine your eligibility for Scholarships please advise if you have been in receipt of any Scholarships under your current (or previous) Higher Degree by Research programs (such as an APA scholarship). 

Please also note that before you can enroll at ANU, the enrolments office will also require Proof of withdrawal from your current University. You can provide this information to us once you have received an offer letter from ANU.

Contact us 

For further information, assistance or enquiries please contact us at: [email protected] .

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BIOL8700 - Research Proposal

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MPhil in Statistics

In disciplines as diverse as biology, economics, actuarial studies, psychology, physics, archaeology, medicine and information technology, qualified statisticians play an important role in making proper sense of data.

Through the MPhil program in Statistics at the Research School of Finance, Actuarial Studies and Statistics (RSFAS), candidates will receive rigorous training in core statistical application and theory, enabling them to choose a specialisation from a wide variety of areas.

The program is focused on developing candidates for a career in government or industry, or as a pathway to further postgraduate studies. Career options include researcher in scientific, medical or health research organisations; researcher or analyst in government agencies, such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, or departments of Health, Agriculture, Education, Finance and Treasury; researcher or quantitative data analyst in the corporate sector, including the banking, finance and insurance, pharmaceutical, energy and mining sectors; and management and statistical consultant.

CRICOS #: 048350D

Duration: 1 to 2 years full time (2 to 4 years part time)

Before you submit an application for entry to the program, you should:

• ensure you meet the admission requirements outlined below
• identify potential supervisors – that is, one or two statistics academics at ANU who conduct research in your area of interest.

You can find information on researchers and their research areas in the  ANU researchers database  and on the  RSFAS Statistics faculty  page.

While other ANU schools may recommend contacting potential supervisors before submitting an application,  this is not required  for entry into RSFAS’s MPhil programs. Instead, you only need to list the name(s) of potential supervisors in your online application form.

Potential supervisors cannot guarantee entry into the MPhil program. Admission will depend on the strength of your application relative to others in the pool.

After you’ve completed the steps above, you can proceed with an  online application .

Application deadlines

The first semester of the ANU academic year starts in February, and the second semester starts in July. While all applications for first semester entry must be submitted  before 31 October,  international applicants wishing to be considered for an  ANU scholarship  should submit their applications  before   31 August .

To be considered for a scholarship, your application must be accompanied by all the supporting documents listed below, including the referee reports. Request for referee reports are triggered and sent to your nominated referees at the time of submission of program application. It is thus important that you submit your application in advance (2-3 weeks) to allow time for your referees to provide their reports prior to the scholarship deadline.

If you’re currently completing an academic degree and haven’t yet received your final results and transcript, you should still submit all available documents before the deadline, and forward remaining results once you receive them. We won’t make a final decision on your application until we’ve received all the required documents.

The admission requirements for the MPhil program in Statistics reflect the knowledge that applicants will need to undertake the coursework component of the degree, and the skills needed to undertake original research.

The minimum qualification requirement for admission to the MPhil program in Statistics is:

• a Bachelor degree with an overall grade of distinction or higher in statistics (or a closely related discipline) from an Australian university, or
• another qualification that the RSFAS HDR (higher degree by research) committee is satisfied is equivalent or superior to a degree mentioned in (a), or
• a combination of qualifications and professional experience that the RSFAS HDR committee is satisfied is equivalent or superior to a degree mentioned in (a).

Admission to the MPhil program in Statistics is competitive and we can only admit a limited number of applicants each year. Meeting the minimum entry requirements does not guarantee you a place in the program.

English language requirements

All applicants must satisfy the University’s  English language admission requirements . An international applicant who is not a native English speaker may satisfy these requirements by submitting evidence of an  IELTS  overall score of at least 6.5, and with no component less than 6.0, or a paper-based  TOEFL  score of at least 570, with at least 4.5 in the essay component.

Application and supporting documentation

You must submit your application online via the  ANU Application Manager .

In addition to the standard information required in the online application, you must submit the following supporting documents as part of your application:

• a one-page statement of purpose outlining your motivation to undertake an MPhil in Statistics at ANU
• a research proposal  – see details below, as well as these  guidelines  on how to  prepare a persuasive research proposal
• if available, copies of written research work, e.g. honours or Master thesis, research projects or published works
• official  TOEFL  or  IELTS  results (where applicable) to demonstrate that you satisfy the University’s  English language requirements .

Research proposal

The online application requires you to submit a research proposal. The proposal should set out a research question and objectives, provide an introduction or background to your research idea, and explain why your research is important and the contribution it will make to the statistics discipline. As a guide, you should aim for 1,000 to 1,500 words, including a list of key references.

The RSFAS HDR committee uses the research proposal as an indicator to assess the quality and originality of your ideas, your skills in critical thinking, and how your research interests fit with the School’s current research focus and supervision capacity.

Offers of admission

The RSFAS HDR committee will review all complete applications submitted by the relevant deadline.

If your application is short-listed, you may be required to attend an interview (face to face or online).

We may send you an offer of admission if you satisfy the eligibility criteria and your area of interest matches those of RSFAS academics with supervisory capacity. However, since admission is competitive and supervisory capacity is limited, we won’t send any offers of admission until  after the relevant application deadline , irrespective of the date when you submit your application.

The MPhil program in Statistics consists of two components –  coursework  and  research .

Candidates undertake the research component concurrently with the required coursework.

MPhil coursework component

The specific coursework requirements for the MPhil in Statistics will depend on the candidate’s background and will be determined through discussion with the HDR convenor before the candidate commences. The standard coursework requirement consists of the following compulsory courses:

• STAT8027  Statistical Inference
• STAT8056  Advanced Mathematical Statistics

The candidate will choose up to three electives in consultation with the HDR convenor.

MPhil research component

While attending courses, MPhil candidates undertake research and work towards completion of a thesis. It is important that candidates start developing their research topic ideas by consulting with their supervisor and other academic staff within RSFAS early in their candidature.

Research supervisory panel

When an MPhil candidate is admitted to the program, a supervisor is assigned. The supervisor has the responsibility of overseeing the candidate’s progress. Either in a candidate’s first year of study, or soon after completion of their coursework, a supervisory panel will also be chosen. The role of the supervisory panel is to assist, advise, and provide support and encouragement to the candidate for a timely and successful completion of the research thesis.

RSFAS statistics seminar program

The RSFAS statistics seminar program consists of regular seminars presented by national and international researchers. MPhil candidates are expected to attend and actively participate in the seminars throughout their candidature.

Research integrity training

Within three to six months of enrolment, all MPhil candidates must complete the  Research Integrity Training  and pass the exam. Completion of this course and exam is a compulsory milestone for all MPhil candidates.

Thesis proposal review

MPhil candidates are required to present a thesis proposal to the RSFAS faculty and submit a paper to their supervisory panel, typically towards the end of the first year of studies. The purpose of the thesis proposal review is to assess the originality, significance, adequacy and achievability of the candidate’s thesis plan.

The proposal includes a description of the research to be undertaken in the thesis, and a summary of the thesis structure and time plan.

Successful completion of the thesis proposal review is required to continue in the MPhil program.

Transfer to PhD program

Some candidates undertake the MPhil as a pathway to PhD studies. Under some circumstances, candidates may apply to transfer to the PhD program part way through the MPhil program. For information about pathways to PhD studies, contact the RSFAS HDR convenor.

Annual progress review

It is University policy that each candidate’s progress be reviewed periodically. In each year of their program, MPhil candidates are required to submit an  annual plan and report  as a basis for periodic progress review. This document provides details on work completed by the candidate since the previous review, current progress, and any problems that may impact their research. It also outlines the coursework and research the candidate intends to undertake in the following 12 months.

Oral presentation

In their final year, candidates are required to give a final  oral presentation  on their research, usually three months before submitting their thesis.

Read more about  research candidate milestones .

Thesis submission and examination

The culmination of the MPhil in Statistics is a written thesis which, upon completion, is submitted for examination. The thesis is examined by experts in the relevant field.

For more information on the process, visit our page on  submitting a thesis .

For information about scholarships available to HDR candidates, visit our page on  scholarships and fees .

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Research Proposal Writing Workshop

Join Professor Inger Mewburn (The Thesis Whisperer) for an interactive workshop on writing a research proposal for a MPhil or PhD. The workshop covers composing your research title and research questions and will share tips and tools for putting together a complete proposal.

Professor Inger Mewburn is a research educator who has been working with PhD students for over a decade.

She is creator of the famous Thesis Whisperer blog, which has had 4.3 million hits in the last five years and has 60,000 followers on email and social media. The blog is the most popular source of advice for research supervisors and students around the world because it is grounded in scholarly practice in higher education research.

This interactive workshop is tailored to those interested in applying for a Sir Roland Wilson or Pat Turner scholarship.

Date: 14 December 2022 Time: 10.00am-12.00pm Via Zoom

Registration required.

HDR Thesis Proposal Reviews (Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences)

The Thesis Proposal Review (TPR) outlines the what, why and how of your research. As the first major milestone for PhD students, the TPR is important for convincing your School that you understand the process of scholarly enquiry, and that you have a project that is both viable and feasible. In this workshop, relevant research proposals from HASS are analysed to better understand their purpose and key components. Discuss and develop strategies for planning, structuring and writing your own proposal. 

Dates and times

• Mon 04 Mar 2024, 1:00 pm - Mon 04 Mar 2024, 3:00 pm

Room: McDonald Room

•   ANU Academic Skills   Send email

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Scott Lang ANU Example Research Proposal

This is one of the assessment tasks I undertook during 2015 for the Australian National Universitz subject Social Research Practice. Please note that this is listed here simply to showcase my research skills. The research proposal did not proceed, this was done for learning purposes only.

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The Jason Passioura Bursary: Promoting excellence in data acquisition and analysis

Applications close at 5pm on 30 April, 2024

Conditions of Bursary

1. introduction.

The Jason Passioura Bursary honours its namesake who passed away in 2022 after battling Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) brain cancer for 16 months.

Jason was a valued member of the NCEPH community who showed enthusiasm for his work and demonstrated exceptional commitment to data accuracy and ensuring that evidence-based research was undertaken with a focus on improving the quality of source data.

This Bursary recognises Jason’s outstanding contribution to research, in particular Jason’s achievements in using spatial analysis to inform suicide prevention research; work carried out at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (NCEPH) as a collaboration between GRAPHC (the National Centre for Geographic Resources & Analysis in Primary Health Care) and the Black Dog Institute.

The Jason Passioura Bursary will continue Jason’s legacy, by each year funding one or more students or researchers (academic Level A or B or professional staff) to undertake activity in pursuit of their research goals. The Bursary is intended to support the use of high-quality data in research. Given Jason’s commitment to spatial analyses especially regarding suicide prevention, applications that relate to these areas will be considered favourably.

Any activities that align with the intent of the bursary will be considered. Examples of activities include costs incurred for:

• data access or data acquisition
• software subscription
• training in spatial methods (course cost and travel)
• travel to a relevant conference
• relevant conference registration

The value of the Bursary will be determined by the Director in consultation with the NCEPH Scholarships Committee, taking into account the available funding, and will be stipulated in the letter or offer. It is intended to be awarded annually over a period of 10 years, unless otherwise determined by the Director.

4. Eligibility

The Bursary will be awarded each year to a continuing domestic or international student (postgraduate or HDR or Honours) who is enrolled in a program of study at NCEPH;and/or an ECR (Level A or Level B); and/or a professional staff member with suitable experience working at NCEPH.

5. Application

Applicants should provide the following documents saved in one PDF:

• A completed application form
• A 1-page (maximum) covering letter outlining the proposed activity for which funding is sought, including the proposed travel itinerary and costings (please describe how any shortfall in funding will be covered)
• A 2-page (maximum) CV

6. Selection

Selection will be made on the basis of:

• The merit of the proposal in progressing research goals, which can include professional development. Describing multiple gains, such as meeting with collaborators before or after a conference, is highly regarded);
• Consistency of the proposal with the intent of the Jason Passioura Bursary;
• The benefit of the proposal to the individual; and
• The benefit of the proposal to NCEPH.

The Selection Committee shall be determined by the Director of the NCEPH. The Selection Committee will make a recommendation on the Award to the Director, NCEPH, once each year.

The Bursary shall not be awarded if, in the opinion of the Selection committee, there is no applicant of sufficient merit. NCEPH reserves the right to make no awards in a given year, to vary the number of awards or to make an award/s at other times in exceptional circumstances as approved by the Director NCEPH.

7. Concurrent holding of Awards

The Bursary can be held concurrently with other Awards.

8. Termination and payment

NCEPH may terminate a Bursary that has been awarded if the recipient is not making satisfactory progress. If the Bursary is terminated the selection committee shall take into account the information available and shall determine whether any repayment of the Bursary monies is payable.

9. Taxation

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About Jason

Jason undertook his undergraduate studies BSc at ANU, graduating with honours in 1991.

A keen and enthusiastic photographer and bush walker, not forgetting, farmer, cross country skier and coffee connoisseur.

Jason was passionate about data integrity and accuracy. As a spatial scientist, Jason was acutely aware that spatial precision is essential for analyses and the importance of ensuring that the chosen analyses are appropriate for the quality of the data. 

Jason was an integral part of the National Centre for Geographic Resources & Analysis in Primary Health Care (GRAPHC). GRAPHC promoted the use of geographical information systems (GIS) to inform locally relevant and equitable solutions for targeting health resources and services in Australia. 

From 2016, Jason worked tirelessly with suicide data in support of the Black Dog Institute’s LifeSpan program.

“Jason was an instrumental collaborator supporting several leading-edge LifeSpan prevention initiatives.  The Black Dog team benefited from Jason’s extensive expertise in geospatial mapping and attention to detail validating, analysing, and cleaning inaccurate data points. His analytical skills allowed the team to gather accurate information, identify precise locations and gain insights into where interventions were needed. Jason’s critical eye supported the delivery of several prevention data reports, supporting numerous suicide prevention collaborative working groups helping them plan their suicide prevention strategy. Rest in peace Jason Passioura”

Before joining GRAPHC in 2016, he worked in the Commonwealth Environment Department. As a highly skilled GIS Spatial Analyst with over 15 years of experience in demanding and changing environments, Jason (as part of teams) meticulously assessed data sets that helped determine official boundaries of Australia’s extensive network of new marine parks, thus leaving a separate enduring legacy.

Jason was passionate about data quality in all his endeavours and for the 6 years with GRAPHC his ability to produce high quality spatial data, spatial data analyses, mapping products and reports was a real asset. Jason was an engaging and pleasant work colleague and was popular with all who worked with him. His passion, skill, and commitment persisted to the end, and he is missed as a colleague and a friend.

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Last April's total solar eclipse, photographed from Bloomington, Indiana. Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty

• Environment

“Things Are Moving So Quickly” as Scientists Study This “Very Scary” Climate Strategy

The controversial field of solar geoengineering is hitting its stride..

Jessica McKenzie June 30, 2024

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This story was originally published by  Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and is reproduced here as part of the  Climate Desk   collaboration.

In 2006, a group of preeminent scientists met for  a two-day conference at the NASA Ames  Research Center in California to discuss cooling the Earth by injecting particles into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight into space.

At some point, one of the conference rooms became overheated.

“The room was getting kind of hot, and somebody went over to the thermostat to try and fix it,” recalled Alan Robock, a Rutgers climatologist who was in attendance. “And they couldn’t adjust it. And so many people didn’t understand the irony that you can’t control the temperature of a room, but you’re talking about controlling the temperature of the whole Earth.”

Solar geoengineering—also called solar radiation management or solar radiation modification—was then and is now a fraught subject. Many experts and nonexperts alike consider the idea of deliberately mucking about with Earth’s climate systems to counteract centuries of mostly accidental mucking about in Earth’s climate systems ethically dubious and potentially highly dangerous.

And yet: Last year, the global average temperature was  almost 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer  than the pre-industrial average, due to the vast amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide that humans have added to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. This warming is responsible for  a wide range of climate impacts , from more extreme storms and longer heat waves to increased precipitation and flooding as well as more severe droughts and longer wildfire seasons.

As the climate crisis has escalated, some experts have suggested that drastic measures like solar geoengineering may eventually become necessary and so should be researched now.

Would it work? In 1991,  the eruption of Mount Pinatubo spewed 17 million metric tons of sulfur dioxide  into the atmosphere, which cooled the Earth by roughly 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit) for about a year. After the Tambora volcano in Indonesia erupted in 1815, parts of Europe and North America saw a “year without summer.” Scientists have looked to those events to try to understand what might happen if humans deliberately released sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. But there is a world of difference between studying naturally occurring volcanic eruptions and intentionally modifying the amount of solar radiation that reaches Earth’s surface.

Solar geoengineering is a controversial area of research for numerous reasons. In 2008, Robock penned an article for the  Bulletin  on  the 20 reasons solar geoengineering could be a bad—possibly even catastrophic—idea ; a  more recent version  expanded the list to 26.

Introducing particles like sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere could create a plethora of new and unpredictable problems. Possible negative impacts may include changing regional weather patterns—creating or shifting areas of drought or regions that receive extreme precipitation—or altering tropospheric chemistry and ocean circulation patterns.

Partially blocking the sun’s rays could interfere with normal plant processes and reduce agricultural yields. Adding sulfate aerosols to the stratosphere would degrade the ozone layer (thereby increasing global cancer rates) and increase acid rain. The potential effects of solar radiation management are so large and wide-ranging as to implicate almost every aspect of life on the planet.

The potential effects of solar radiation management are so large and wide-ranging as to implicate almost every aspect of life on the planet.

Even in best-case scenarios, it would be only a partial stopgap. Solar geoengineering, for example, does nothing to ameliorate ocean acidification, which occurs when the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This acidification  threatens ocean life  like oysters, clams, sea urchins, corals, and the calcareous phytoplankton that help make up the foundation of the marine food web on which much of humanity depends.

Also, many experts agree, global governance structures are profoundly ill-equipped to deal with the kinds of questions solar geoengineering will raise: How much cooling is the right amount? (Wouldn’t Russia want things a bit warmer, and India somewhat cooler?) Who benefits, and who doesn’t, and who decides? How would disputes about the negative impacts of any geoengineering regime be adjudicated? The type of world-spanning, long-term regulatory scheme required to institute and manage solar geoengineering has no precedent in human history.

Some have argued that merely conducting research could inspire rogue actors to take things into their own hands, with potentially disastrous geophysical and geopolitical results. Then there is the moral hazard argument against geoengineering: If humans began cooling the Earth with solar geoengineering, wouldn’t that give citizens a false sense of security—and companies an excuse to pump the brakes on decarbonization of energy systems and proceed with fossil-fuel-burning business as usual?

As fringe as the idea of solar radiation modification once was and as generally controversial as it remains, it is gaining some traction. Last spring, the University of Chicago hired David Keith, one of the most visible proponents of solar geoengineering, to lead a new Climate Systems Engineering initiative, committing to at least 10 new faculty hires for the program. The group will study solar geoengineering, as well as other kinds of Earth system modifications aimed at addressing the climate crisis.

With this initiative, the University of Chicago is attempting to position itself as the place for serious scientific consideration of the logistics and implications of Earth system interventions aimed at reversing or counteracting climate change. It is part of a broader university effort to become a global leader in the climate and energy space.

Previously, Keith was at Harvard University, where he helped launch the  Solar Geoengineering Research Program . After repeated delays and years of controversy, Harvard recently  canceled  a small-scale outdoor geoengineering experiment that Keith helped plan. That  experiment  would have involved launching a high-altitude balloon, releasing fine particles of calcium carbonate into the stratosphere, and then sending the balloon back through the cloud to monitor how those particles disperse and interact within the atmosphere, and with solar radiation.

Although many of the sources interviewed for this article acknowledged the controversial nature of solar geoengineering, they also pointed out that the University of Chicago is a leading educational institution that prides itself on not shying away from tough questions or topics. And because of its provocative nature, climate systems engineering—a term the university created to describe this emerging field—is also an area of research that, until now, has lacked strong, centralized institutional support. This has created a vacuum that University of Chicago leaders seem excited to fill.

Michael Greenstone, the director of the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago (EPIC), led the faculty committee that proposed the Climate Systems Engineering initiative and was instrumental in bringing Keith to Chicago. Greenstone described the academy’s indifference to geoengineering research as “malpractice.”

“I thought it was really different and consequential to have UChicago—without any particular person on campus who was an advocate of climate engineering research—to say, ‘We think this makes sense to build as a field.'”

“We’re going to wish we had effective carbon dioxide removal technologies operating at scale, or we’re going to wish we knew how to modulate temperatures with various forms of geoengineering to prevent human suffering,” Greenstone told the  Bulletin . “But these ideas are not being stress-tested in a systematic way, and the University of Chicago’s tradition of bravery at pursing important ideas, no matter how controversial, make this the perfect place to create the field of climate systems engineering.”

In the early stages of developing the initiative, Keith helped the university organize an event with researchers working on topics that could fall under the umbrella of climate systems engineering.

“Here was the most distinguished group of scholars in the world in this field,” recalled university president Paul Alivisatos. “To a person, what they said is, ‘I’ve always felt that I have to do this work very quietly by myself, as one person in my university, because it’s just not a set of ideas that people want to engage with.’” (Alivisatos did not respond to a later request for a list of event attendees. Keith responded in an email: “I don’t believe we told people the meeting would be public so I would have to go back and double check that each person okayed it which seems like too much trouble.”)

There are researchers studying solar geoengineering at Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Colorado State, and ETH Zurich, but, Keith said, most of those programs came about because of “a single person who pushed it forward, sometimes against resistance, and then it grew.”

“I thought it was really different and consequential to have UChicago—without any particular person on campus who was an advocate of climate engineering research—to say, ‘we think this makes sense to build as a field, to actually build it in a serious way and make a commitment to do that,’” Keith added.

As with many new university initiatives, this one started with a new president. In November 2021, Alivisatos charged a university committee with the task of determining how the university could best establish itself as a “global leader in the climate and energy space.” One of the specific requests was to “[d]etermine the areas in which the University of Chicago does not currently have strong faculty presence but could expand its influence by facilitating the development of new ideas in key areas that other universities are missing.”

The committee was chaired by Greenstone, an economist, and included two other economists, an ecologist, two molecular engineers, a historian, a geologist, a law professor, and a computer scientist.

Susan Kidwell, a geologist and paleobiologist, was shocked to be the only committee member from the geophysical sciences department and said that there were two other people from the department who would have been “more appropriate.” Kidwell said that the make-up of the committee helped avoid “preaching to the converted,” but it raised the eyebrows of outside observers.

“I think part of the big story here is not even just about geoengineering, specifically, but about the fact that the university decided to basically give control over their biggest climate initiative, primarily, to the economics department,” said Raymond Pierrehumbert. Pierrehumbert is an Oxford physicist and former University of Chicago professor in geophysical sciences, a former member of the  Bulletin ’s Science and Security Board ,  a prominent climate change expert, and an outspoken critic of solar geoengineering.

Greenstone has done a lot of work at the intersection of climate, the environment, and economics, Pierrehumbert acknowledged. While the chief economist on President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, for example, Greenstone was  one of the key architects of efforts to calculate and use the social cost of carbon  in federal policy making. But he is not a climate or atmospheric scientist, nor were any of the other members of the University of Chicago committee that explored the university’s role in climate and energy.

The committee’s report in March 2022 made several recommendations, including the design of new undergraduate and graduate programs related to energy and climate and the development of “climate forward” policies, so the university’s operations reflect its commitment to climate action. The strongest recommendation was to create a new Climate and Energy Institute, what one faculty member described as a “super EPIC,” with a mission to “fundamentally alter education and research on a global scale.” It has since been announced that Greenstone  will be the founding director  of that new institute.

The committee recommended the university start research programs within the new institute in three substantive areas: economics, markets, and policy; energy conversion and storage systems; and climate systems engineering.

The last stands out for its tangential relation to the “energy” part of climate and energy. But for better or worse, climate systems engineering certainly fit the brief of filling a gap in the research landscape and creating a plausible path to becoming a global leader in a specific area.

According to the committee report, “[M]ost models, including all major models used by the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], indicate that the world will need to deploy carbon dioxide removal technologies on a massive scale in the near future. Moreover, to blunt the pace of rapid climate change, nations may turn to geo-engineering tools, such as solar radiation management. Higher temperatures may also require managing, indeed perhaps engineering, ecosystems to be resilient to climate change and even help mitigate it.”

The report suggested creating a research initiative based around these problems and potential solutions, under the new umbrella term of “climate systems engineering,” which could “position the University at the forefront of this central challenge of reducing and perhaps reversing the harms from climate change.” This would include working on improvements in climate modeling and other computational tools, as well as “novel materials, sensing devices, and chemical strategies for carbon dioxide removal and geo-engineering.”

The report concluded its remarks on climate systems engineering by acknowledging the moral hazard argument against research into geoengineering and arguing that the university should not be cowed by that. It stated that “concerns about reputation and that innovation will incentivize increased greenhouse gas emissions today have prevented many universities from adequately engaging in this area. In many respects, climate systems engineering resembles other instances where UChicago’s fearless commitment to go wherever the facts lead has helped build its intellectual reputation.”

Where some supporters of the university’s initiative see research bravery, other experts see the potential for enabling extraordinarily dangerous interventions in Earth’s climate systems.

Historically, geoengineering has referred to  either taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere (carbon removal) or solar radiation management, which could take the form of releasing reflective aerosols into the stratosphere, brightening clouds with salt water, or putting sun shields into space. The University of Chicago  is also including  interventions like glacier geoengineering—using manmade structures to protect ice shelves from warming ocean waters, for example—under the umbrella of climate systems engineering.

While the Climate Systems Engineering initiative will study open system carbon removal, like enhanced rock weathering or ocean alkalinity enhancement, it will not study direct air capture , something Keith worked on at a company he founded, Carbon Engineering. That company was recently purchased by fossil fuel giant Occidental for  $1.1 billion . Occidental will use the captured carbon dioxide, at least in part, to pressurize oil fields and extract more oil from them. The industry considers the technology a kind of lifeline: “If it’s produced in the way that I’m talking about, there’s no reason not to produce oil and gas forever,” Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub  told NPR . (Keith has had no legal involvement with Carbon Engineering since the sale was completed.)

In his 2013 book,  A Case for Climate Engineering , Keith wrote that carbon removal and solar geoengineering are no more similar to one another than they are to technologies that advance decarbonization or energy efficiency.

“My own guess is that if geoengineering works, humanity will not want to phase it out. It will become more agile and provide increasing control, and that will be addictive.”

Among those options for managing climate risk, the ethical, technical, environmental, and governance questions that accompany solar radiation management are unique. “Because solar geoengineering and carbon removal have little in common, we will have a better chance to craft sensible policy if we treat them separately,” Keith wrote.

Keith is now in charge of a program that not only, in a sense, lumps the two technologies together, but also throws in a few others for good measure. “I do feel there’s some level of crow eating because I spent a lot of time arguing how totally separate they are—I’ve even done that in congressional testimony. Now I’m running something that does both,” Keith said. “A lot of people I respect have been lumping them forever. And so sometimes you have to listen to people.”

Open system carbon removal and solar radiation management, Keith added, both raise a lot of complicated environmental and Earth science issues. On the other hand, enhanced rock weathering—spreading finely ground silicates on Earth’s surface to speed up the chemical reactions that pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—does not raise the same kind of governance questions as solar radiation management. “Local entities, national governments or state governments, can regulate soil health, more or less, on their own,” Keith explained. “So in that sense, it’s not global the way solar geoengineering would be.”

Other experts have argued the two technologies must be considered as a pair because the arguments in favor of solar geoengineering often depend on the success of large-scale carbon dioxide removal.

One reason that solar geoengineering has received attention recently is because the world has been slow to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, threatening to push global temperatures past the aspirational limit set by the Paris climate agreement.  Keith and others have argued  that solar geoengineering could be a way to limit warming while the world gets around to slashing emissions  and  figures out how to do large-scale carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere.

Alivisatos echoed that sentiment, telling the  Bulletin , “What this would be doing more than anything else, presumably, is offering one way to have more time.”

“If you have to do geoengineering, you’re saddling the next 1,000 years of humanity with continuing to do it. And that’s a huge intergenerational obligation.”

But Shinichiro Asayama, a researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan, and Mike Hulme, a geographer at the University of Cambridge, have  compared  this strategy to the risky subprime mortgage lending that tanked the world economy between  2007 and 2010 . If solar geoengineering is deployed to compensate for slow emissions reductions, banking on the world’s as-yet unproven ability to do large-scale carbon removal, Hulme and Asayama argue, it will create an ever-increasing “climate debt” that carbon dioxide removal may or may not ever be able to pay back.

Taking on an increasing amount of climate debt could prove to be too easy and seductive, if solar geoengineering were ever successfully deployed. This worries Robert Socolow, a physicist and environmental scientist—and member of the  Bulletin ’s Science and Security Board—known for his work on climate stabilization efforts.

“My own guess is that if geoengineering works, humanity will not want to phase it out,” Socolow told the  Bulletin . “It will become more agile and provide increasing control, and that will be addictive. A limited geoengineering epoch is not something I would bet on. That makes me see deployment as truly fateful, a crossing of the Rubicon, probably permanently changing humanity’s relationship with nature.”

This is a major concern of Pierrehumbert, as well. “If you have to do geoengineering, you’re saddling the next 1,000 years of humanity with continuing to do it,” he said. “And that’s a huge intergenerational obligation, which engages really deep ethical concerns.”

Opinions among University of Chicag o faculty members who spoke to the  Bulletin  about the initiative ranged from cautious enthusiasm to quiet skepticism.

David Archer, a climate scientist in Chicago’s geophysical sciences department and a member of the Climate Systems Engineering initiative board, expressed a kind of desperate optimism about the initiative, pointing out that the Earth is  dangerously near catastrophic climate tipping points , like thawing permafrost and melting ice sheets.

“Climate engineering is very scary. As a scientist, and as a citizen, I want to see this field investigated in a very serious and intentional way.”

“The idea of dialing down the temperature of the whole planet is horrifying,” Archer said. But, he added, it’s not nearly as horrifying as “dialing it up with CO2,” because any sulfates or particles used in solar geoengineering will soon fall out of the atmosphere, whereas carbon dioxide will persist for centuries.

Archer pushed back on critics who fear that the cure could be worse than the disease. “I’m primarily opposed to outdoor release of CO2,” he said. He pointed out that many critics of geoengineering will casually take cross-country or international flights, while he abstains from flying if he can help it. “I’m just so much less frightened about sulfur emissions than CO2 emissions, and everybody is so sanguine about CO2 emissions. I just have trouble taking it it seriously.”

Some of the faculty members I interviewed expressed the opinion that if more research into—and potentially even experimentation with—solar radiation management and other kinds of geoengineering was inevitable, they would rather it take place at the University of Chicago than at a less rigorous institution, or some private start-up.

“We thought, well, this isn’t going away,” said Fred Ciesla, a planetary scientist and former chair of the geophysical sciences department, describing some of the conversations he had with his department colleagues about the program. “Rather than be on the periphery of it, why not bring in people that we trust to take on—like I said, to hold up the research to the standards that we set and expect here at the University of Chicago, and make this a really rigorous investigation, make sure it’s being done with the care that is needed.”

Kidwell pointed out that there are already some efforts to manipulate the climate taking place outside of academia, with great potential for non-governmental actors to engage in risky experiments. Make Sunsets,  a start-up using balloons to release sulfur dioxide gas  into the stratosphere and selling “cooling credits” to fund its work, is one example.

“Climate engineering is very scary,” said Kidwell. “As a scientist, and as a citizen, I want to see this field investigated in a very serious and intentional way. And I want it to be done somewhere where it’s surrounded by scientists, [and] the engineers are not left alone.”

At least one faculty member is already thinking about her responsibilities within an institution that is prioritizing this kind of research. Elisabeth Moyer, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Chicago, submitted a $30 million grant proposal to NASA for a field campaign to take point measurements in the atmosphere over two summers. “And that’s just basic preliminary background that you would want to do before even thinking about doing planetary engineering,” she said, underscoring the magnitude of work that still needs to be done and the associated expense. “The planet is not the same everywhere. The southern hemisphere is very different from the northern hemisphere. We’ve never flown modern instrumentation to study stratospheric aerosols in the southern hemisphere of our own planet.”

Initially, a decision on Moyer’s proposal was delayed because Congress had not passed a budget. Moyer has since learned that NASA rejected the proposal.

“We’re proposing planetary geoengineering, and our government is not capable of passing a budget allocation,” she said, pointing to the kind of governance and implementation hurdles that geoengineering would face even if it were deemed technologically feasible and environmentally safe.

Others were careful to draw a line between solar geoengineering research and implementation.

“I’m a strong proponent of doing the research,” said Robert Rosner, an astrophysicist at the university, former director of the Argonne National Laboratory, a member of the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors, and part of the group overseeing the Climate Systems Engineering initiative. “I’m not a strong proponent of actually doing it [solar radiation management].”

It is important to learn as much as possible about what geoengineering would entail and what the potential consequences would be, Rosner said, “and to suss out in particular what the unintended consequences could be, what kinds of things could happen that we didn’t really think hard enough about, because we didn’t do the work that’s necessary.”

The two University of Chicago faculty members who expressed greater skepticism about the initiative were unwilling to go on the record with their doubts, but geoengineering critics outside the university had no such reservations.

“In [my book] The New Climate Wars I talk about that nexus of despair and techno-optimism, and geoengineering as weaponized doomism and despair,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “The primary thing [that worries me] is the possibility that we could actually accelerate climate changes. You know, we’re not confident enough to know that we couldn’t change regional climate, [and] end up warming the Arctic, parts of the Arctic, even faster, at the expense of cooling the continents, [or] slowing down the hydrological [cycle].”

Mann also fears that researching solar radiation management could derail other climate action. “Why is it that Rex Tillerson says that climate change is an engineering problem?” Mann asked. “Isn’t that convenient that the [former] CEO of ExxonMobil wants us to think that?” He flagged the techno-optimism of wealthy business figures like Bill Gates as a particular concern, for funding technological solutions to climate change while downplaying or rejecting more effective political solutions aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Gates supports geoengineering research and helped  fund  the aborted Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment ( SCoPEx ) that David Keith worked on at Harvard. Gates was also  an early investor  in Keith’s direct air capture start-up, Carbon Engineering, and Keith has advised the billionaire on topics related to climate and energy.

These prior efforts might have made Keith an appealing candidate to lead what the University of Chicago committee explicitly said would be an expensive initiative. In their report, the committee wrote, “it is important to note that for UChicago to become a global leader in climate systems engineering, especially geoengineering, it will be necessary to make substantial investment because the field is emergent and largely unrepresented on the University’s campus.”

“If you wanted to do it today or tomorrow you couldn’t, because the technology doesn’t exist. So you’d have to invent airplanes that could fly that high and carry this stuff.”

The university recently was in the news because of the poor state of its finances, and last December, administrators said they planned to reduce the  operating budget by a quarter .

When asked whether the university would partner with private donors or companies, Alivisatos said, “Not ready to say what we’re going to do in that space yet, honestly.”

But he pointed to the University of Chicago’s participation in the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago, along with University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University, as an example of “philanthropic dollars that are really being focused for the long-term understanding of something that is deeply important.”

“In my opinion, the great universities will be ones that are good and adept at partnering with other institutions and other stakeholders in society, to help bring everything to bear to make it happen,” Alivisatos added. “And we shouldn’t be afraid of that.”

The government is another potential partner for the program, specifically the US Energy Department’s Argonne National Laboratory, a University of Chicago affiliate, although what that partnership might look like is still up in the air. “We really want [the partnership with Argonne] to work,” Keith said. “I think there’s plenty of people at Argonne who want it to happen. There’s no really substantive thing that’s happening yet.”

Alivisatos was the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 2009 to 2016, and as the president of University of Chicago, is currently the chair of the Board of Governors at Argonne.

Whether the world is warming up to the idea of solar geoengineering wasn’t something the people interviewed for this article could agree on. “Things are moving so quickly,” Keith said. “And this feels like a year that’s sort of pivotal, where people’s thinking about this is really changing.”

Last year, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a  congressionally mandated report  that explored the pros and cons of federal research into solar radiation management, although it explicitly said there are “no plans underway to establish a comprehensive research program focused on solar radiation modification.” A few months later, the UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology published a report on  the ethics of climate engineering .

Earlier this year, Keith attended  a meeting hosted by the Environmental Defense Fund  that convened several dozen scientists, activists, and philanthropists to discuss an expected infusion of funding into solar geoengineering by techno philanthropists. He also said he’s seen a proposal related to solar geoengineering that EDF made to one of its funders. “Don’t mistake this for me thinking EDF is arguing for implementation, but if they do this, then EDF clearly will be advocating for research in a serious way,” he said.

“People say it might be a slippery slope to deployment. And my answer is, it might be a sticky slope. The more research we do, the more problems we might find.”

Earlier this month, the Environmental Defense Fund’s plans were made public by the  New York Times , which  reported  that the group will spend millions on research of solar geoengineering technologies. The group hopes to begin issuing grants this fall. “We are not in favor, period, of deployment. That’s not our goal here,” Lisa Dilling, the associate chief scientist at EDF running the program, told the  Times . “Our goal is information, and solid, well-formulated science.”

Others pointed out how far solar geoengineering is from being a reality, in spite of the argument Keith made in his 2013 book that it would be easy and cheap and that the “specialized aircraft and dispersal systems required to get started could be deployed in a few years for the price of a Hollywood blockbuster.”

Over a decade later, very little practical progress has been made on that front. “If you wanted to do it, today, or tomorrow, you couldn’t, because the technology doesn’t exist,” Robock said. “So you’d have to invent airplanes that could fly that high and carry this stuff up there.”

Robock—an environmental scientist perhaps best known for his atmospheric modeling work supporting the concept that nuclear war could inject smoke into the stratosphere, cooling Earth and causing “nuclear winter”—thinks that more research is likely to provide even more reasons  not  to do solar geoengineering. “People say it might be a slippery slope to deployment,” he said. “And my answer is, it might be a sticky slope. The more research we do, the more problems we might find.”

It’s hard to reconcile the strong opinions on the relative risks and benefits of solar geoengineering.

Robock, who recently attended the Gordon Research Conference on Climate Engineering, an event he and Keith jointly started, succinctly summed up the quandary: “The number one reason it would be a good idea is if you could reduce global warming, you decrease many of the negative impacts of global warming. The question is, which is riskier: doing it or not doing it?”

Keith still leans towards the latter. “I think, a cold read of the literature is that if you did a relatively small amount, meaning that’s just one of the things you do, as well as emissions cuts, not instead of emissions cuts, and if you balance it between the hemispheres, then I think it’s fair to say that the evidence that the risks would be small compared to the benefits is pretty strong,” Keith said. His calm, matter-of-fact manner and style of writing—his book makes for a compelling read—are persuasive.

But so are the arguments of solar geoengineering skeptics, like Pierrehumbert, who easily lists all the things that could upset anything like Keith’s ideal scenario. If, for example, solar geoengineering is deployed successfully, and it cools the Earth and lessens the impacts of global warming, people may continue emitting carbon dioxide as they do now. Atmospheric carbon dioxide will continue to rise—and remain there for centuries—and the amount of solar geoengineering necessary to counteract it will also increase.

In the meantime, the oceans will continue to absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide, leading to ocean and coastal acidification that, the US  Environmental Protection Agency says , would “affect entire ecosystems, including one animal at the top of the food chain—humans. Humans rely on the ocean for food and other economic resources. Ocean and coastal acidification may not just affect life underwater, but ultimately all of us.”

“Aaron Tang, a scholar of climate governance, has argued that the robust, global system necessary to monitor and manage any implementation of solar geoengineering is a “pipe dream.”

Or say Russia wants to keep its Arctic ports clear of ice, and it introduces countermeasures to interfere with solar geoengineering. If the solar geoengineering that masks global warming is suddenly cut off, that could create a sudden rate of warming called termination shock that could be worse than what the world is experiencing now.

“People say that climate change is different from nuclear war, because it doesn’t set on all at once,” explained Pierrehumbert. “And that’s pretty much true. It’s a sort of a creeping increase. But the one thing that could make the catastrophe of climate change as much of a mega-death/almost-instant-catastrophe as nuclear war is solar geoengineering, and the nightmare scenario where we start deploying it. And then the world uses that as an excuse to continue emitting CO2…and then we have an event which might even be nuclear war, that causes it to stop. And then all that warming instead of playing out over centuries, that warming plays out over a matter of a decade or a half decade.”

Keith has not overlooked these risks. “When I consider geoengineering scenarios that lead to outright disaster, or converse scenarios in which geoengineering is prematurely abandoned despite its social and environmental benefits, all involve geopolitical failures,” he wrote in his 2013 book. He also argued that geoengineering is a geopolitical leveling technology, similar to the internet or nuclear weapons, and that “like other levelers—most notably nuclear proliferation—this fact is disturbing in its potential to lead to international conflict.”

Certainly any future implementation of solar radiation management would require a monumental effort on the part of global leaders to ensure adequate and fair consideration of potential and actual impacts, and to make incredibly difficult decisions about how much cooling to engineer, and exactly how that cooling will be achieved.

Such cooperation would have to continue for decades, if not indefinitely, and it would need to be durable enough to respond—sanely—to the inevitable questions that would arise, like whether a particular natural disaster on one continent could be attributed to climate engineering or to normal climatic variations. Aaron Tang, a scholar of climate governance at the Fenner School of Environment & Society at the Australian National University, has  argued in the  Bulletin  that the robust, global system necessary to monitor and manage any implementation of solar geoengineering is a “pipe dream.”

This challenge was  front and center at the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi this year . A Swiss resolution called for a working group to assess the feasibility of solar radiation modification, as well as the risks, benefits, and uncertainties of deployment. The United States supported research, but argued it should be conducted by a different mechanism—specifically, within a climate research program at the World Meteorological Organization.

In contrast, a group of African states—including Senegal, Kenya, Cameroon, Djibouti and South Africa, joined by Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, Barbados, Argentina, and Ecuador—called for a moratorium on solar geoengineering. Fiji, Vanuatu, and Pakistan—all extremely climate-vulnerable countries—largely supported that position. This divide underscores the vast challenge of fair and equitable representation and decision-making on solar geoengineering.

Moyer said she hoped that the Climate Systems Engineering initiative would study these governance issues in addition to the science and engineering aspects of climate systems engineering. “I think that an important component of this initiative would be hiring somebody who thinks very hard, in very practical terms, about international negotiations,” she said.

Keith said that he is working to hire someone who is “mostly on the social science side.”

But when it came to specific and concrete goals for the program or the research questions he hopes to tackle, Keith was frustratingly vague. “I should be doing less of my own research,” he said. “I think it’s really important to be getting other people to do stuff, and then they decide what they’re doing. Which sounds kind of evasive.”

He also deflected questions about whether he would encourage or push for outdoor solar geoengineering research, like what he tried to do at Harvard with SCoPEx: “Not me personally, again, because I don’t think I’m going to do a lot of research myself. So I think the answer is, I don’t really know.”

Wherever the University of Chicago initiative leads, it will be into terra incognita—which was a good part of the motivation behind the initiative in the first place.

“Every university has some kind of climate effort now,” said Keith. “Quite apart from what’s good or bad about climate systems engineering or so on, universities do need to figure out how to focus a little bit to do something useful.”

It’s a “much-needed gap in the literature,” said one of the anonymous faculty members. “It is the kind of thing no one really wants to talk about or think about for various reasons. Most people would say that’s appropriate. It’s a needed gap. But it is definitely a gap. And there is no clear leadership there … so it’s a place where focused investment could create a real mark. Making a mark generically on climate change research is hard, a lot of institutions are all over that. There’s huge investment across the world. How are you going to do that? Here’s a way to do that.”

The question is whether boldly going where no other university has gone before is, in this instance, something to be lauded—or cause for extra scrutiny and skepticism. And worry.

Is Sucking Carbon Out of the Air the Solution to Our Climate Crisis?

Clive Thompson

Solar Geoengineering Could Prevent Massive Storms. It Could Also Backfire.

China’s Crazy Plan to Keep Sand From Swallowing the World

Text by Vince Beiser; Photography by Ian Teh

This Technology Could Stop the World’s Deadliest Animal

Michael Mechanic

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• Directories

Research Candidate Milestones

Milestone eform via isis.

ANU research candidates are required to meet a number of progress milestones including an initial Annual Plan, completion of Research Integrity Training, Annual Plan & Reports, the Thesis Proposal Review, and the final Oral Presentation of your research. These milestones are valuable project management tools that can help you and your supervisor set research goals, reflect on your research activities, and ensure you are on track for successful completion of your program.

Your College, School or Centre may require additional milestones such as a Mid-Year Review or completion of ethics requirements, or you may be required to do some coursework during your program, but before submitting your thesis.

All ANU candidates are required to meet satisfactory academic progress. This means that they must meet the minimum academic performance requirements as established by the University and determined by the Delegated Authority (DA). What constitutes satisfactory academic progress depends on the level of the program or, in some circumstances, requirements specific to an individual program.

Candidates will be notified of other requirements to maintain satisfactory progress. All candidates should be aware of the  Research Awards Rule which govern all research programs at ANU.

Candidates can log in to ISIS  to see which milestones have already been completed and upcoming due dates and to commence a milestone report. Milestone reports are created as eForms, and are designed to be intuitive and easy to use. Upon submission, your milestone report will be electronically directed to the Chair of your supervisory panel.

Candidate Supervisor Agreement

From August 2020 it is compulsory for all new HDR candidates, and existing candidates that are within their first 2.5yrs of (full-time equivalent) their PhD  program or 1.5yrs (full-time equivalent) of their MPhil program to complete and upload the Candidate Supervisor Agreement form (located in the 'Reference documents' box to the right) with their Annual Plan milestone each year.

This document is a dynamic document that should be reviewed and amended as appropriate throughout your candidature. It is important that the expectations of both the candidate and supervisor are discussed and documented via the eForms. The Candidate Supervisor Agreement matrix (located in the 'Reference documents' box to the right) has been designed to assist with the completion of the template as a framework to initiate conversations between the Primary Supervisor and the HDR candidate.

^Clause 6 of the HDR Candidature Progression Procedure allows the Delegated Authority to vary timeframes, such as in instances where mandatory coursework is required. The HDR Candidature Progression Procedure is available at the link above.

Advisory information

• Student Administration eForms
• Assessment of higher degree research
• Extension of a research program
• Research program leave
• Research scholarship information
• Research study load
• Termination of your research program
• Withdraw from a research program

Reference documents

• ANU HDR Candidate Supervisor Agreement (PDF, 213.62 KB)
• HDR Candidate Supervisor Agreement matrix (PDF, 511.08 KB)

Use contact details to request an alternative file format.

• HDR - candidature progression procedure
• Supervision in higher degrees by research

Legislations

• Research Awards Rule 2021 (Latest version)  

Related websites

• Change Working Thesis Details
• 135 ANU (135 268)

• Programs and Courses

Research Proposal

A graduate course offered by the Crawford School of Public Policy .

• Code EMDV8008
• Unit Value 6 units
• Offered by Crawford School of Public Policy
• ANU College ANU College of Asia and the Pacific
• Course subject Environmental Management & Development
• Academic career PGRD
• Dr Keith Barney
• Mode of delivery Online or In Person
• Offered in First Semester 2019 See Future Offerings

• Introduction

Learning Outcomes

Indicative assessment, requisite and incompatibility, prescribed texts, other information.

• Offerings and Dates

<iframe width="420" height="235" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YiEgmrpnm2c?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

This course allows students to prepare a research proposal, on a topic of their choice, that can be implemented in Semester 2 as part of EMDV8066 Research Project.

This course is a requirement (with a minimum Distinction grade) for students wanting to enrol in EMDV8066 Research Project in Semester 2.

Upon successful completion, students will have the knowledge and skills to:

On successful completion of this course, students will:

1.    Be able to develop research questions and hypotheses

2.    Be able to carry out a critical literature review, using well developed analytical and synthesis skills

3.    Understand research design, and be able to choose rigorous and practical research methods to address a problem focused research question(s)

4. Be able to structure, present and write a research proposal, using high level written and verbal communication skills

Outline of proposal, critical literature review, presentation of research proposal, research proposal

The ANU uses Turnitin to enhance student citation and referencing techniques, and to assess assignment submissions as a component of the University's approach to managing Academic Integrity. While the use of Turnitin is not mandatory, the ANU highly recommends Turnitin is used by both teaching staff and students. For additional information regarding Turnitin please visit the ANU Online website.

Ten hours per week (including 3.5 contact hours)

Reading material will be discussed with the course convener and will depend on the topic of relevance to the student

Tuition fees are for the academic year indicated at the top of the page.  

If you are a domestic graduate coursework or international student you will be required to pay tuition fees. Tuition fees are indexed annually. Further information for domestic and international students about tuition and other fees can be found at  Fees .

If you are an undergraduate student and have been offered a Commonwealth supported place, your fees are set by the Australian Government for each course. At ANU 1 EFTSL is 48 units (normally 8 x 6-unit courses). You can find your student contribution amount for each course at Fees .  Where there is a unit range displayed for this course, not all unit options below may be available.

Course fees

Offerings, Dates and Class Summary Links

ANU utilises MyTimetable to enable students to view the timetable for their enrolled courses, browse, then self-allocate to small teaching activities / tutorials so they can better plan their time. Find out more on the Timetable webpage .

First Semester

Responsible Officer: Registrar, Student Administration / Page Contact: Website Administrator / Frequently Asked Questions

• Contact ANU
• Freedom of Information

+61 2 6125 5111 The Australian National University, Canberra CRICOS Provider : 00120C ABN : 52 234 063 906