Technologies | |
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INTRODUCTION |
(Text from CHATGpt - needs major revision.)
Geoengineering refers to deliberate, large-scale interventions in the Earth's climate system to counteract or mitigate the effects of climate change.
These technologies are still largely theoretical or experimental, and many of them come with significant ethical, environmental, and geopolitical concerns.
Some prominent geoengineering technologies and approaches include:
It's important to note that geoengineering technologies are still largely experimental, and their potential consequences, both intended and unintended, are not fully understood.
Implementing these technologies could have far-reaching environmental, social, and political implications.
Many experts and policymakers emphasize that reducing greenhouse gas emissions through mitigation and adaptation measures should remain the primary focus in addressing climate change,
with geoengineering considered as a last resort or as a complementary strategy in extreme circumstances.
Ethical, governance, and international cooperation issues also need to be addressed before deploying geoengineering technologies on a large scale.
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Nature-based Ocean and Atmospheric Cooling Techniques | References |
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Short Description | CDR technologies remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or surface ocean. Typical methods involve either photosynthesis which converts it into biomass and oxygen, or capture it from the air or water, whence it requires sequestration or use. Concentrating aqueous CO2 in dense brine may also be used to sink it away from the atmosphere via the Solubility Pump. | Description | CDR, or the more general term Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR), refers to destroying or removing a portion of the tropospheric gases and particulates that insulate the planet, thereby reducing the rate by which heat is radiated from it. These include carbon dioxide, water vapour, methane, nitrous oxide (N2O), ozone, volatile organic compounds (VOC), and the industrial gases: hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), perfluorocarbons (PFC), sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), and nitrogen trifluoride (NF3). Although not gases, the particulates soot/black carbon, dust (some from meteoric or burnt up space junk sources), and microorganisms may also be regarded as warming agents because they typically absorb sunlight and warm the surrounding gas. On the other hand, tropospheric particulates such as sea salt and ice crystals will tend to have an albedo cooling effect, unless they are in the stratosphere where they may contribute to warming because they reflect radiation back to the planet. |
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Short Description | Convective methods utilise the lesser density of warmed substances to loft their heat content to where it can more readily radiate into space. | Description | Convection is the upwards movement, typically of a warmed and therefore typically less dense material (ice being an exception), such that its heat content is dissipated upwards. Thermals, twisters, storms and hurricanes are examples of such energy transference. The presence of water vapour in a thermal contributes substantially to the energy flow because when it condenses to rain or ice in the upper, cooler and rarified air, the heat of condensation and of fusion is imparted to the air before precipitation occurs. An Atmospheric Vortex Engine (AVE) is a method for artificially generating a fixed location twister. |
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Short Description | Thickening ice tends to increase its longevity and its albedo (reflectiveness), both of which cool the planet. Pumping seawater onto sea ice may also brighten surfaces darkened by the deposition of soot, dust or organisms. | Description | As ice thickens typically from its base, and ice is itself a good insulator, sea ice thickening rapidly tails off as the ice thickens. The thickening rate can be increased if water or seawater is pumped onto existing ice, and is therefore in contact with the typically much colder atmosphere and is further increased by wind chill. As brine freezes at a lower temperature than does seawater, the freezing rate can be increased still further: by allowing a rejected portion of brine to flow off a conical ice surface back into the sea; by using intermittent pumping; and by engineering only a shallow depth of pumped seawater. |
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Short Description | Spraying tiny saltwater droplets of appropriate sizes and numbers into the air, such that they move upwards under thermals and turbulence and then nucleate or thicken marine cloud that increases cloud solar reflectivity, and helps to cool the planet during daylight (but insulates it during the dark hours, partially offsetting the cooling and shading effects). | Description | MCB may sustainably be generated using power from offshore wind turbines, from drone vessels, and conceptually from manned vessel emissions, seawater sprays, and waste heat. Spare energy may also be used to sublimate nano-sized iron salt aerosols (ISA) of ferric chloride that efficiently photocatalyse the destruction of the powerful, airborne greenhouse gas methane (CH4) from the same platforms. |
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Short Description | Methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, may be removed from the atmosphere by photocatalytic means, such as iron salt aerosols (ISA) of ferric chloride, and from water and soil by adding nutrients missing for methanotrophs (methane eaters). In water columns, such as the oceans, swamps or rice paddies, the supplementary nutrients may best be applied using the Buoyant Flakes method. |
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Short Description | Adding alkaline substances like calcium carbonate to the ocean to increase its capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. Ocean surface alkalinity may also be increased by increasing the rate of photosynthesis which transforms carbonic acid into neutral biomass and oxygen. | |
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Short Description | Adding nutrients to the ocean to promote the growth of phytoplankton, allows them to absorb more carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, thereby sequestering carbon, increasing albedo & oxygenation, and enhancing the marine food web. |
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Short Description | Downwind precipitation control is influenced by several factors, including: humidity, the concentration, nature and size distribution of airborne nuclei, thermals, altitude, temperature, turbulence, wind and topography. As the first seven of these tend to be the more amenable to modification, we focus on these in our proposed methods. |
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Short Description | This involves injecting sulfate aerosols or other reflective particles into the stratosphere to reflect a portion of incoming sunlight, thereby reducing global temperatures. |
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Short Description | Restricting our scope to NOAC methods, our proposed methods include brightening: cryogenic regions with fresh snow and ice, the ocean surface waters with reflective bubbles, and the euphotic (sunlit) zone of the ocean with biomass, chiefly in the form of additional micro & macroalgae (phytoplankton & the buoyant types of seaweed). |
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Short Description | Upwelling (natural or artificial) brings typically-cool, well-nutriated seawater to the surface, displacing or mixing with typically-stratified, warm and nutrient deficient (oligotrophic) surface water. The combination of additional nutrients and coolness will usually increase marine biomass in surface waters, chiefly by photosynthesis. Alternatively, some of our proposed methods involve periodically sinking seaweed (typically at night) so that it can absorb the nutrients that it will metabolise nearer the surface in daytime.
Where the deeper water has a level of CO2 concentration that might diffuse from surface water into the atmosphere, this adverse effect might be mitigated by ensuring that the upwelled water does not quite reach the surface. |
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