page_title: Climate engineering
section_title: Greenhouse gas removal
hierarchical_section_title: Climate engineering / Proposed strategies / Greenhouse gas removal
caption_attribution_description: English: Phytoplankton bloom in the South Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Argentina captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. (Probably Coccoliths) Français&#160;: Bloom (développement algal) de phytoplancton dans l'Océan Atlantique Sud au large de l'Argentine détecté par le satellite Aqua de la NASA à l'aide du spectroradiomètre MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer). (Coccolithes probablement)
context_page_description: Climate engineering or climate intervention, commonly referred to as geoengineering, is the deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system, usually with the aim of mitigating the adverse effects of global warming. The most prominent subcategory of climate engineering is solar radiation management. Solar radiation management attempts to offset the effects of greenhouse gases by causing the Earth to absorb less solar radiation. Almost all research into solar radiation management has to date consisted of computer modelling or laboratory tests, and an attempt to move to outdoor experimentation has proven controversial. A 2014 paper in Nature found that among a variety of climate engineering subcategories: afforestation, ocean upwelling, ocean iron fertilization, and ocean alkalinization, only solar radiation management was able to stabilize global temperatures to pre-industrial levels.
  Some methods of greenhouse gas removal, such as ocean iron fertilization, are forms of climate engineering. Ocean iron fertilization has been investigated in small-scale research trials. These experiments have proven controversial.
context_section_description: Some forms of greenhouse gas removal, but not all, may be regarded as a form of climate engineering.
  Carbon dioxide removal (sometimes known as negative emissions technologies or greenhouse gas removal) projects seek to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  Proposed methods include those that directly remove such gases from the atmosphere, as well as indirect methods that seek to promote natural processes that drawdown and sequester CO₂ (e.g. tree planting). Many projects overlap with carbon capture and storage projects, and may not be considered to be climate engineering by all commentators. Techniques in this category include:
  Creating biochar (i.e. in biomass-fired thermal power plants), for mixing into the soil to create terra preta
  Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage to sequester carbon and simultaneously provide energy
  Carbon air capture to remove carbon dioxide from ambient air
  Afforestation, reforestation and forest restoration to absorb carbon dioxide
  Ocean afforestation and ocean fertilization (which includes iron fertilization of the oceans)
  Many of the IPCC model projections to keep global mean temperature rise below 2 °C, are based on scenarios assuming deployment of negative emissions technologies.
caption: An oceanic phytoplankton bloom in the South Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Argentina. The aim of ocean iron fertilization in theory is to increase such blooms by adding some iron, which would then draw carbon from the atmosphere and fix it on the seabed.
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