Understanding Carbon Dioxide Removal and Management within an Integrated Research Program for Evaluating Climate Intervention Strategies

Abstract:

To limit climate change to well below 2°C the use of climate intervention strategies is becoming increasingly likely. To assess the implementation and effectiveness of these strategies, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR/UCAR) has set up a new effort: The Community Climate Intervention Strategies (CCIS) program. The program considers a range of baseline scenarios combined with climate targets, and a suite of climate intervention strategies for use with NCAR and wider community Earth System modeling and research. Three main areas of climate intervention are considered in CCIS: 1. Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) through land and ocean management; 2. Solar Radiation Management (SRM) through cloud brightening; and 3. SRM through stratospheric aerosol injection.

This talk will focus on the CDR components of the CCIS program through: 1. Land and ocean management through changing agricultural, forestry, biofuel production and the impacts of consumption practices; 2. Evaluating the intended and unintended consequences of Carbon Dioxide Removal and Management on large land areas where they compete with food production, water resources, nature conservation, biodiversity and ecosystem function; 3. The possibility of carbon capture and geo-sequestration associated with energy production and other industrial processes; 4. Further changes to industrial, energy and transport sectors through energy transformation and the implementation of new chemical and industrial processes; and 5. Reduction in uncertainty through combining observations, modeling and social sciences to achieve the range of possible Climate Intervention Strategy objectives developed by the scenarios.