Developing Geoengineering Research at Bristol workshop

Research into geoengineering, the deliberate large-scale modification of the Earth-system to address climate change, is rapidly expanding and Bristol has the potential to contribute much to this growing field. At Bristol there are around 20 researchers actively involved in geoengineering research and staff members have recently won funding as part of two multi-million pound research initiatives, AIGP and SPICE funded by NERC and EPSRC, which are helping to make this one of the world-leading institutions in this field. However, many of the researchers studying geoengineering at Bristol are doing so without being aware of each other and the broad range of geoengineering research that’s going on here. As geoengineering is a new field of research, there are many researchers at Bristol that are completely unaware of geoengineering and yet could bring unique insights into the issues raised by these Earth-changing geoengineering proposals. We propose to organise a day-long event to showcase current geoengineering research at Bristol, strengthen the links between existing researchers and explore future funding opportunities with researchers across the university.

A number of useful connections were made between researchers:
- Researcheres in Earth Sciences at Bristol were able to organise the Geoengineering + Vegetation discussion group - with other global-change researchers
- Researchers from Bristol's Earth Sciences department were also able to attend a geoengineering + biodiversity impacts workshop in Potsdam, Germany, and have been invited to attend another impacts workshop.