Marine cloud brightening

Marine cloud brightening (MCB), also known as marine cloud seeding or marine cloud engineering, may be a way to make stratocumulus clouds over the sea brighter, thus reflecting more sunlight back into space in order to limit global warming. It is one of two such methods that might feasibly have a substantial climate impact, but is lower in the atmosphere than stratospheric aerosol injection. It may be able to keep local areas from overheating. If used on a large scale it might reduce the Earth's albedo; and so, in combination with greenhouse gas emissions reduction, limit climate change and its risks to people and the environment. If implemented, the cooling effect would be expected to be felt rapidly and to be reversible on fairly short time scales. However, technical barriers remain to large-scale marine cloud brightening, and it could not offset all the current warming. As clouds are complicated and poorly understood, the risks of marine cloud brightening are unclear as of 2025.

Very small droplets of sea water are sprayed into the air to increase cloud reflectivity. The fine particles of sea salt enhance cloud condensation nuclei, making more cloud droplets so making the clouds more reflective.: 628  MCB could be implemented using fleets of unmanned rotor ships to disperse seawater mist into the air.: 43  Small-scale field tests were conducted on the Great Barrier Reef in 2024.

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