Solar geoengineering is no substitute for cutting emissions, but could nevertheless help reduce the atmospheric carbon burden. In the extreme, if solar geoengineering were used to hold radiative forcing constant under RCP8.5, the carbon burden may be reduced by ∼100 GTC, equivalent to 12–26% of twenty-first-century emissions at a cost of under US$0.5 per tCO2.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Relevant articles
Open Access articles citing this article.
-
Right to Food and Geoengineering
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Open Access 10 February 2023
-
Geoengineering and the blockchain: Coordinating Carbon Dioxide Removal and Solar Radiation Management to tackle future emissions
Frontiers of Engineering Management Open Access 01 March 2019
-
Evaluating climate geoengineering proposals in the context of the Paris Agreement temperature goals
Nature Communications Open Access 13 September 2018
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
National Research Council. Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth (National Academies Press, 2015).
If all else fails. The Economist (26 November 2015).
Robock, A. Bull. At. Sci. 64, 14–18 (2008).
Keller, D. P., Feng, E. Y. & Oschlies, A. Nat. Commun. 5, 3304 (2014).
Tjiputra, J. F., Grini, A. & Lee, H. J. Geophys. Res. Biogeosci. 121, 2–27 (2016).
Schuur, E. A. G. et al. Nature 520, 171–179 (2015).
Hunter, S. J., Goldobin, D. S., Haywood, A. M., Ridgwell, A. & Rees, J. G. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 367, 105–115 (2013).
Xia, L., Robock, A., Tilmes, S. & Neely, R. R. III Atmos. Chem. Phys. 16, 1479–1489 (2016).
National Research Council. Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration (National Academies Press, 2015).
Keith, D. W. & Irvine, P. J. Earth's Future 4, 549–559 (2016).
Friedlingstein, P. et al. J. Clim. 19, 3337–3353 (2006).
Egleston, E. S., Sabine, C. L. & Morel, F. M. M. Glob. Biogeochem. Cycles 24, GB1002 (2010).
Isaac, M. & van Vuuren, D. P. Energy Policy 37, 507–521 (2009).
Pierce, J. R., Weisenstein, D. K., Heckendorn, P., Peter, T. & Keith, D. W. Geophys. Res. Lett. 37, L18805 (2010).
McClellan, J., Keith, D. W. & Apt, J. Environ. Res. Lett. 7, 034019 (2012).
Our Changing Planet: the US Global Change Research Program for Fiscal Year 2017 (USGCRP, 2016).
Riahi, K. et al. Climatic Change 109, 33 (2011).
Burns, E. T. et al. Earth's Future 4, 536–542 (2016).
Lawrence, M. G. & Crutzen, P. J. Earth's Future 5, 136–143 (2017).
Lenton, A. et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L12606 (2009).
Weisenstein, D. K., Keith, D. W. & Dykema, J. A. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 15, 11835–11859 (2015).
Keith, D. W., Weisenstein, D. K., Dykema, J. A. & Keutsch, F. N. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 113, 14910–14914 (2016).
Muri, H., Niemeier, U. & Kristjánsson, J. E. Geophys. Res. Lett. 42, 2951–2960 (2015).
Partanen, A.-I., Keller, D. P., Korhonen, H. & Matthews, H. D. Geophys. Res. Lett. 43, 7600–7608 (2016).
Jones, C. et al. J. Clim. 26, 4398–4413 (2013).
Acknowledgements
The authors thank K. Caldeira for discussion and feedback.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
C.L.Z. began work on this analysis while a researcher at Harvard. She now works for the Open Philanthropy Project, which subsequently became a funder of Harvard's Solar Geoengineering Research Project, co-directed by D.W.K. and G.W.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Solar geoengineering reduces atmospheric carbon burden
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Keith, D., Wagner, G. & Zabel, C. Solar geoengineering reduces atmospheric carbon burden. Nature Clim Change 7, 617–619 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3376
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3376
This article is cited by
-
Right to Food and Geoengineering
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics (2023)
-
Climate politics, metaphors and the fractal carbon trap
Nature Climate Change (2019)
-
Geoengineering and the blockchain: Coordinating Carbon Dioxide Removal and Solar Radiation Management to tackle future emissions
Frontiers of Engineering Management (2019)
-
Evaluating climate geoengineering proposals in the context of the Paris Agreement temperature goals
Nature Communications (2018)
-
The Effects of Solar Radiation Management on the Carbon Cycle
Current Climate Change Reports (2018)