Climate Adaptation and Intervention: Wildfire Resilience and Solar Radiation Management

Overview

Objectives

By participating fully in this activity, students will learn how to:

• Explain how hotter, drier conditions and growing development at the wildland-urban interface (WUI) increase the wildfire risk to people
• Describe household, community, and policy measures that reduce wildfire risk, including home hardening, defensible space, evacuation planning, and protection from wildfire smoke
• Explain how SRM would cool the planet by increasing Earth’s reflectivity, and why it would not reverse other effects of high CO₂, such as ocean acidification
• Compare stratospheric aerosol injection and marine cloud brightening, including their real-world analogs (the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption and ship tracks) and recent field experiments
• Weigh the potential benefits of SRM against its physical, social, and ethical risks, including termination shock and moral hazard

Grade Level

Grades 11-12, Undergraduate

Standards

These are Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) performance expectations.

• HS-ESS3-1 — Construct an explanation based on evidence for how the availability of natural resources, occurrence of natural hazards, and changes in climate have influenced human activity.
• HS-ESS3-4 — Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.
• HS-ETS1-3 — Evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics, as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts.

This lesson also supports these international frameworks:

• Global competence (Asia Society and OECD): Investigate the world; Take action
• UNESCO learning objectives for SDG 13 (Climate Action):
  • Cognitive 4: the ecological, social, cultural and economic consequences of climate change
  • Cognitive 5: prevention, mitigation and adaptation strategies
  • Behavioural 2: acting in favour of people threatened by climate change

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

• SDG 11 — Sustainable Cities and Communities: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
• SDG 13 — Climate Action: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

Materials Required

Needs review: The five short readings for the jigsaw activity (slide 26) aren't included in her materials. Two other sources cited on the slides, a Sierra Club article (slide 19) and a New York Times article (slide 25), block automated checks, so they aren't listed. Ask Marissa Saenger for the reading list.

• PDF slideshow “Class 15 slides 08.27.2025.pdf” (Climate Adaptation / Intervention: Wildfire Resilience, Solar Radiation Management, Geoengineering, SIO 25, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego)
• Five short readings on solar geoengineering for the jigsaw activity
• Paper and pencil
• This discussion guide, since the lecture slides do not include built-in discussion prompts

Learning Sequence

Lesson Plan Introduction

As wildfire seasons grow longer and more destructive, and as some researchers propose reflecting sunlight to cool the planet, this lesson pairs a practical form of climate adaptation with a controversial form of climate intervention, and asks students to weigh what each can and cannot do.

Activity Details

1. Getting Started (Slides 1–6)

• Introduce the lesson’s two topics (slides 1–2). Slides 3 and 29 are announcements for the original course; skip or replace them.
• The climate news slides (4–6) cover August 2025 stories about U.S. solar and wind energy policy. Replace them with current climate news, or ask each student to bring one recent climate story.

2. Why Wildfires Are Getting More Dangerous (Slides 7–9)

• Present how warming, longer fire seasons, volatile precipitation, and development at the wildland-urban interface expose more people to fire risk (slide 7).
• Discuss how fires start (slide 8): about 85% of U.S. wildfires have human causes, and human-started fires tend to ignite in more extreme conditions, near populated areas.
• Explain how fire spreads (slide 9): moisture, wind, and topography; invasive grasses; and wind-blown embers, which cause about 90% of building ignitions.
• Discussion question: Why might a fire started by a power line be more destructive than one started by lightning?

3. Reducing Wildfire Risk (Slides 10–14)

• Present landscape-level strategies for the WUI (slide 10) and household measures such as home hardening and defensible space (slide 11).
• Cover emergency preparedness and evacuation (slide 12), the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission’s 2023 recommendations (slide 13), and protecting health from smoke, contaminated water, and trauma (slide 14).
• Discussion question: Which of these measures should be the responsibility of individual homeowners, and which should fall to local, state, or federal governments? Why?

4. Solar Radiation Management: Science, Benefits, and Risks (Slides 15–20)

• Introduce SRM and its other names (slide 15): a deliberate effort to reduce the amount of solar energy absorbed by the Earth system. Slide 17 marks a five-minute break.
• Explain the science basics (slide 18): SRM increases Earth’s reflectivity, but it would not undo climate change, reverse ocean acidification, or restore pre-industrial conditions.
• Weigh the risks (slide 19), including regional climate disruptions, termination shock, and moral hazard, against the benefits (slide 20), such as rapid cooling that could buy time for emissions cuts and help avoid dangerous climate thresholds.
• Discussion question: If SRM could cool the planet within a few years, does that make relying on it more or less risky? Why?

5. Stratospheric Aerosol Injection and Marine Cloud Brightening (Slides 21–25)

• Present SAI (slides 21–22): reflective aerosols in the stratosphere, the Mount Pinatubo analogy, its risks, and its relatively low cost. Address the common misconception that airplane contrails are geoengineering.
• Present MCB (slides 23–24): spraying sea salt particles to brighten marine clouds, with ship tracks as a real-world example, and the scientific uncertainties that remain.
• Discuss recent MCB experiments (slide 25): trials to protect the Great Barrier Reef, and the Alameda, California experiment that was halted over local concerns.
• Discussion question: Why might a small experiment with no measurable risks still face strong public opposition?

6. Jigsaw Reading and Class Discussion (Slides 26–28)

• Each student chooses one of five short readings on solar geoengineering (3–5 minutes), finds a classmate who read a different one, and summarizes it for them (3–5 minutes) (slide 26).
• Lead a class-wide discussion (slide 27): Should solar geoengineering research continue? Why or why not?
• Briefly introduce other geoengineering proposals, such as barriers around vulnerable ice sheets and mirrors in space, and their trade-offs (slide 28).

Conclusion

Close with a values-based question: Should communities invest in adapting to climate impacts like wildfire, in researching climate interventions like SRM, or in both? What would you want to know before deciding?

Global Connections

Needs review: Claude drafted the Global Connections section, and the global competence and UNESCO SDG 13 entries under Standards, from the lesson materials. Review and edit them.

Start where you teach

The slides use U.S. news and wildfire statistics. Replace them with current local news and data, for example from the Global Wildfire Information System, or swap wildfire for the climate hazard that matters most where you teach, such as floods or heat.

Bring in other perspectives

Ask how wildfire risk and responses differ between communities, including Indigenous fire stewardship, and who pays for adaptation.

Share beyond the classroom

Students can prepare a household or school preparedness guide for their own community.

Lesson materials

Download the files below to teach this lesson. PDFs are accessible versions; PowerPoint and Excel files can be edited for your class.

Teacher resources

• Lesson slides

  Needs review: This PDF was exported from Google Slides without tags, so screen readers can't follow its structure or read it in order. Remediate it (for example in Equidox) before publishing the file.

  • Download PDF: Lesson slides

• The Geoengineering Question

  Zeke Hausfather’s explainer in The Climate Brink, cited on slide 18.

  • Open Link: The Geoengineering Question

• Solar Geoengineering Would Be Radical. It Might Also Be Necessary.

  Freakonomics Radio episode on the benefits of SRM, cited on slide 20.

  • Open Link: Solar Geoengineering Would Be Radical. It Might Also Be Necessary.

Related lessons

• Solar Climate Intervention: Weighing Benefits, Risks, and Moral Hazard: another introduction to solar radiation modification, built around benefits, risks and moral hazard, with a graduate version on aerosol physics
• Managing Climate Overshoot: Where Solar Radiation Management Fits in the Climate Toolkit: another introduction to solar radiation modification, comparing it with emissions cuts, carbon removal and adaptation
• Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth: Evidence from Climate Models and Volcanic Eruptions: another introduction to solar radiation modification, built on climate model results and past volcanic eruptions
• Climate Change and Solar Radiation Modification: Science, Risks, and Who Decides: another introduction to solar radiation modification, from the state of the climate to governance, with a science–policy role-play version

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