http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652614010154

Journal of Cleaner Production

Available online 2 October 2014, doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.076
In Press, Accepted Manuscript — Note to users

Review of Geoengineering Approaches to Mitigating Climate Change

Zhihua Zhang
John C. Moore
Yongxin Zhao

Highlights

•The main attraction of geoengineering lies in that it has short lead times
for technical implementation and act rapidly to mitigate climate
change.•Geoengineering schemes cannot stabilize or control all climate
parameters at the same time.
•Side effects and uncertainties of various geoengineering schemes are huge.

Abstract

Geoengineering, which is the intentional large-scale manipulation of the
environment, has been suggested as an effective means of mitigating global
warming from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, we will
review and assess technical and theoretical aspects of land-based,
atmosphere-based, ocean-based and space-based geoengineering schemes as
well as their potential impacts on global climate and ecosystem. Most of
the proposed geoengineering schemes carried out on land or in the ocean are
to use physical, chemical or biological approaches to remove atmospheric
CO2. These schemes are able to only sequester an amount of atmospheric
CO2 that is small compared with cumulative anthropogenic emissions. Most of
geoengineering schemes carried out in the atmosphere or space are based on
increasing planetary albedo. These schemes have relatively low costs and
short lead times for technical implementation, and can act rapidly to
reduce temperature anomalies caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The costs
and benefits of geoengineering are likely to vary spatially over the planet
with some countries and regions gaining considerably (e.g. maize production
in China) while others may be faced with a worse set of circumstances (e.g.
serious drought, climatic extreme events) than would be the case without
geoengineering. Since current research on geoenigineering is limited and
various international treaties may limit some geoengineering experiments in
the real world, the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP)
provides a framework of coordinated experiments for all earth system
modelling groups to test geoengineering schemes. However, these experiments
used on a global scale have difficulty with accurate resolution of regional
and local impacts, so future research on geoengineering is expect to be
done by combining earth system models with regional climate models.

Keywords

Climate ChangeCarbon Emissions ReductionGeoengineeringCleaner Production

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