The Effects of Carbon Dioxide Removal on the Carbon Cycle

摘要

Increasing atmospheric CO2 is having detrimental effects on the Earth system. Societies have recognized that anthropogenic CO2release must be rapidly reduced to avoid potentially catastrophic impacts. Achieving this via emissions reductions alone will bevery difficult. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) has been suggested to complement and compensate for insufficient emissionsreductions, through increasing natural carbon sinks, engineering new carbon sinks, or combining natural uptake with engineeredstorage. Here, we review the carbon cycle responses to different CDR approaches and highlight the often-overlooked interactionand feedbacks between carbon reservoirs that ultimately determines CDR efficacy. We also identify future research that will beneeded if CDR is to play a role in climate change mitigation, these include coordinated studies to better understand (i) theunderlying mechanisms of each method, (ii) how they could be explicitly simulated, (iii) how reversible changes in the climateand carbon cycle are, and (iv) how to evaluate and monitor CDR.