# 4.1 Real world trials in SRM

Actually, we are already substantially engineering our climate.

Humans have been manipulating the environment for hundreds, if not thousands, of years: constructing and painting buildings with white materials to keep them cooler (Figure 7), planting trees to increase shade and moisture and reduce wind, and so on. These methods act to manipulate local climate and reduce the severity of, for example, the impacts of extreme heat.

Figure 7 White houses in Santorini, Greece.

Local SRM-type geoengineering continues with modern methods such as very reflective new roofing materials (Figure 8), or the use of paler road surfacing materials in Sydney, Australia (Sharples, 2014).

Figure 8 (a) Argus Gentle holds a new roofing material with an albedo of 0.97, made of polymers and a silver film. (b) An infrared photograph shows the much cooler region of the new material (Gentle and Smith, 2015).

OpenLearn - Could we control our climate?
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