Technologies

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.

Convective methods utilise the lesser density of warmed substances to loft their heat content to where it can more readily radiate into space.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

This involves injecting sulfate aerosols or other reflective particles into the stratosphere to reflect a portion of incoming sunlight, thereby reducing global temperatures.

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).

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.