In the study of heat transfer, radiative cooling is the process by which a body loses heat by thermal radiation. As Planck's law describes, every physical body spontaneously and continuously emits electromagnetic radiation.

Radiative cooling has been applied in various contexts throughout human history, including ice making in India and Iran, heat shields for spacecraft, and in architecture. In 2014, a scientific breakthrough in the use of photonic metamaterials made daytime radiative cooling possible. It has since been proposed as a strategy to mitigate local and global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions known as passive daytime radiative cooling.