Climate engineering or commonly geoengineering, is the deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system to counteract climate change. The main categories of climate engineering are solar geoengineering and carbon dioxide removal. Solar geoengineering, or solar radiation modification, would reflect some sunlight (solar radiation) back to space to limit or reverse human-caused climate change. Carbon dioxide removal refers to removing carbon dioxide gas from the atmosphere and sequestering it for long periods of time. The difference between the two is sometimes describes as solar geoengineering modifying the planet's shortwave radiation budget and carbon dioxide removal modifying its longwave radiation budget.