Testing the climate intervention potential of ocean afforestation using the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt
Ensuring that global warming remains <2 °C requires rapid CO(2) emissions reduction. Additionally, 100–900 gigatons CO(2) must be removed from the atmosphere by 2100 using a portfolio of CO(2) removal (CDR) methods. Ocean afforestation, CDR through basin-scale seaweed farming in the open ocean, i...
Published in: | Nature Communications |
---|---|
Main Authors: | , , , , , |
Format: | Text |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2021
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8105394/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33963184 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22837-2 |
id |
ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:8105394 |
---|---|
record_format |
openpolar |
spelling |
ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:8105394 2023-05-15T17:33:09+02:00 Testing the climate intervention potential of ocean afforestation using the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt Bach, Lennart T. Tamsitt, Veronica Gower, Jim Hurd, Catriona L. Raven, John A. Boyd, Philip W. 2021-05-07 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8105394/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33963184 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22837-2 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8105394/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33963184 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22837-2 © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . CC-BY Nat Commun Article Text 2021 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22837-2 2021-05-16T00:38:10Z Ensuring that global warming remains <2 °C requires rapid CO(2) emissions reduction. Additionally, 100–900 gigatons CO(2) must be removed from the atmosphere by 2100 using a portfolio of CO(2) removal (CDR) methods. Ocean afforestation, CDR through basin-scale seaweed farming in the open ocean, is seen as a key component of the marine portfolio. Here, we analyse the CDR potential of recent re-occurring trans-basin belts of the floating seaweed Sargassum in the (sub)tropical North Atlantic as a natural analogue for ocean afforestation. We show that two biogeochemical feedbacks, nutrient reallocation and calcification by encrusting marine life, reduce the CDR efficacy of Sargassum by 20–100%. Atmospheric CO(2) influx into the surface seawater, after CO(2)-fixation by Sargassum, takes 2.5–18 times longer than the CO(2)-deficient seawater remains in contact with the atmosphere, potentially hindering CDR verification. Furthermore, we estimate that increased ocean albedo, due to floating Sargassum, could influence climate radiative forcing more than Sargassum-CDR. Our analysis shows that multifaceted Earth-system feedbacks determine the efficacy of ocean afforestation. Text North Atlantic PubMed Central (PMC) Nature Communications 12 1 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
PubMed Central (PMC) |
op_collection_id |
ftpubmed |
language |
English |
topic |
Article |
spellingShingle |
Article Bach, Lennart T. Tamsitt, Veronica Gower, Jim Hurd, Catriona L. Raven, John A. Boyd, Philip W. Testing the climate intervention potential of ocean afforestation using the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt |
topic_facet |
Article |
description |
Ensuring that global warming remains <2 °C requires rapid CO(2) emissions reduction. Additionally, 100–900 gigatons CO(2) must be removed from the atmosphere by 2100 using a portfolio of CO(2) removal (CDR) methods. Ocean afforestation, CDR through basin-scale seaweed farming in the open ocean, is seen as a key component of the marine portfolio. Here, we analyse the CDR potential of recent re-occurring trans-basin belts of the floating seaweed Sargassum in the (sub)tropical North Atlantic as a natural analogue for ocean afforestation. We show that two biogeochemical feedbacks, nutrient reallocation and calcification by encrusting marine life, reduce the CDR efficacy of Sargassum by 20–100%. Atmospheric CO(2) influx into the surface seawater, after CO(2)-fixation by Sargassum, takes 2.5–18 times longer than the CO(2)-deficient seawater remains in contact with the atmosphere, potentially hindering CDR verification. Furthermore, we estimate that increased ocean albedo, due to floating Sargassum, could influence climate radiative forcing more than Sargassum-CDR. Our analysis shows that multifaceted Earth-system feedbacks determine the efficacy of ocean afforestation. |
format |
Text |
author |
Bach, Lennart T. Tamsitt, Veronica Gower, Jim Hurd, Catriona L. Raven, John A. Boyd, Philip W. |
author_facet |
Bach, Lennart T. Tamsitt, Veronica Gower, Jim Hurd, Catriona L. Raven, John A. Boyd, Philip W. |
author_sort |
Bach, Lennart T. |
title |
Testing the climate intervention potential of ocean afforestation using the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt |
title_short |
Testing the climate intervention potential of ocean afforestation using the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt |
title_full |
Testing the climate intervention potential of ocean afforestation using the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt |
title_fullStr |
Testing the climate intervention potential of ocean afforestation using the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt |
title_full_unstemmed |
Testing the climate intervention potential of ocean afforestation using the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt |
title_sort |
testing the climate intervention potential of ocean afforestation using the great atlantic sargassum belt |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8105394/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33963184 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22837-2 |
genre |
North Atlantic |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic |
op_source |
Nat Commun |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8105394/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33963184 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22837-2 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22837-2 |
container_title |
Nature Communications |
container_volume |
12 |
container_issue |
1 |
_version_ |
1766131547324284928 |