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Should we fertilize oceans or seed clouds? No one knows

Gather scientific evidence on the feasibility and risks of marine geoengineering to guide regulation of research, advise Philip Boyd and Chris Vivian.
  1. Philip Boyd

    1. Philip Boyd is professor of marine biogeochemistry at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia.

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  2. Chris Vivian

    1. Chris Vivian is retired and formerly worked as a national marine adviser at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft, UK.

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The climate clock is ticking. To turn it back, the world is putting its faith in ‘negative-emissions technologies’. These would suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and lock it up for centuries on the land, in the sea or beneath the sea floor (see ‘Marine geoengineering’). Although such technologies are yet to be developed, they are nonetheless implicit in assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). To limit warming to 1.5 °C compared to pre-industrial levels, as much as 20 billion tonnes (gigatonnes) of CO2 might need to be removed from the atmosphere each year until 21001.

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Nature 570, 155-157 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01790-7

References

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