CO₂-removal News

Gasser, T.; Guivarch, C.; et al (2015): Negative emissions physically needed to keep global warming below 2 °C

Gasser, T.; Guivarch, C.; Tachiiri, K.; Jones, C. D.; Ciais, P. (2015): Negative emissions physically needed to keep global warming below 2 °C. In nature communications 6, p. 7958–7958. DOI 10.1038/ncomms8958.

„Here, using state-of-the-art carbon–climate models, we quantify the trade-off between these two options in RCP2.6: an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenario likely to limit global warming below 2°C. In our best-case illustrative assumption of conventional mitigation, negative emissions of 0.5–3Gt C (gigatonnes of carbon) per year and storage capacity of 50–250Gt C are required. In our worst case, those requirements are 7–11Gt C per year and 1,000–1,600Gt C, respectively.“

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Niemeier, U.; Timmreck, C. (2015): What is the limit of climate engineering by stratospheric injection of SO2?

Niemeier, U.; Timmreck, C. (2015): What is the limit of climate engineering by stratospheric injection of SO2? In Atmos. Chem. Phys. 15 (16), pp. 9129–9141. DOI 10.5194/acp-15-9129-2015.

We estimate the reliability of our results through consideration of various injection strategies and from comparison with results obtained from other models. Our calculations show that the efficiency of such a geoengineering method, expressed as the ratio between sulfate aerosol forcing and injection rate, decays exponentially. This result implies that the sulfate solar radiation management strategy required to keep temperatures constant at that anticipated for 2020, while maintaining business as usual conditions, would require atmospheric injections of approximately 45 Tg(S) yr−1 (±15 % or 7 Tg(S) yr−1) at a height corresponding to 60 hPa.

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Sullivan, S. C.; et al. (2015): Understanding cirrus ice crystal number variability for different heterogeneous ice nucleation spectra

Sullivan, S. C.; Morales Betancourt, R.; Barahona, D.; Nenes, A. (2015): Understanding cirrus ice crystal number variability for different heterogeneous ice nucleation spectra. In Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss. 15 (15), pp. 21671–21711. DOI 10.5194/acpd-15-21671-2015.

Linked to cirrus cloud thinning. „Here we use the adjoint model of the Barahona and Nenes cirrus formation parameterization to understand Ni variability for various ice-nucleating particle (INP) spectra. Inputs are generated with the Community Atmosphere Model version 5, and simulations are done with a theoretically-derived spectrum, a lab-based empirical spectrum, and two field-based empirical spectra that di er in the nucleation threshold for black carbon aerosol and in the active site density for dust.“

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Dalby, S. (2015): Anthropocene Formations: Environmental Security, Geopolitics and Disaster

Dalby, S. (2015): Anthropocene Formations: Environmental Security, Geopolitics and Disaster. In Theory, Culture [&] Society. DOI 10.1177/0263276415598629.

„Disasters such as the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns and potentially disastrous plans to geoengineer the climate in coming decades highlight that the human environment is being remade in the Anthropocene. Humanity is now a geological actor, not just a biological one, and that insight, captured in the term Anthropocene, changes understandings of both security and environment in social thought, requiring a focus on production of environments rather than their protection. Disasters help clarify this key point and its significance for considering geosocial formations.“

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18 Karate Reggae Gold: Geoengineering the climate: A cautionary tale for Africa, Asia and planet Earth

„Naomi Klein’s book ‘This Changes Everything’ shows how climate change and the bleak future we are marching toward are inextricably bound up with unfettered capitalism. To preserve capitalist excesses, hi-tech fixes for warming—like Solar Radiation Management—may be employed that hasten the demise of large parts of Africa and Asia and the natural world.“

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Biochar Journal: Anatomy of a Field Trial: Wood-based Biochar and Compost Influences a Pacific Northwest Soil

„The discovery of elevated fertility of the Amazonian Terra Preta soils was widely reported in the news media starting in 2006, coinciding with the initial public awareness of the existential threat of climate change. Small groups of people worldwide seized on the idea of Terra Preta and biochar as a climate solution, and began to publicize and act on the promise of biochar.“

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Ryaboshapko, A. G.; Revokatova, A. P. (2015): A potential role of the negative emission of carbon dioxide in solving the climate problem

Ryaboshapko, A. G.; Revokatova, A. P. (2015): A potential role of the negative emission of carbon dioxide in solving the climate problem. In Russ. Meteorol. Hydrol. 40 (7), pp. 443–455. DOI 10.3103/S106837391507002X.

„Model computations demonstrated that even the whole set of negative emission methods cannot ensure the stabilization of global temperature at the permissible level under the most pessimistic scenarios of CO2 concentration increase in the atmosphere. The conclusion is made that since the middle of the 21st century the humanity will have to use all three approaches to bar the hazardous exceeding of the average global temperature.“

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Wiertz, Thilo (2015): Technology and politics in the Anthropocene: visions of „solar radiation management“

Wiertz, Thilo (2015): Technology and politics in the Anthropocene: visions of „solar radiation management“. In Shannon O’Lear, Simon Dalby (Eds.): Reframing climate change. Constructing ecological geopolitics. Basingstoke: Routledge, pp. 116–131.

Book chapter on SRM. „Research that does not readily follow that succession of explanation and that does not adopt the prevalent scientific framing as a natural starting point for engaging with geoengineering could helpt to broaden the discussion.“

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