Preprints
Search for carbon dioxide removal (53 results)
Repurposing enhanced rock weathering for brownfield cleanup: a practical carbonate–silicate remineralization method for stabilizing cationic metals in shallow soils
Published: 2026-04-01
Subjects: Engineering
Brownfield, mining-impacted, urban fill, and legacy agricultural sites often contain cationic metals concentrated in shallow soil horizons, where they sustain direct-contact, dust, and leaching risk and can complicate redevelopment. This paper reframes enhanced rock weathering (ERW), originally advanced for carbon dioxide removal, as a practical remineralization approach for immobilizing cationic [...]
Buoyancy of volatile-rich kimberlite melts, magma ascent, and xenolith transport
Published: 2026-03-26
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Kimberlite melts are primary carriers of mantle-derived carbon and hydrogen, playing an important role in Earth’s deep carbon cycle and diamond transport. Their low densities, viscosities, and vapor exsolution enable fast ascent rates. Ascending from the upper mantle, kimberlite melts incorporate xenoliths and xenocrysts and exsolve volatiles. These processes alter their initial composition, [...]
How well do global ocean approaches constrain local pCO2?
Published: 2026-03-22
Subjects: Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
The ocean absorbs 29% of humanity’s annual anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and the future of climate change is strongly dependent on how this sink evolves. Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (mCDR) approaches to enhance this sink are actively being developed. In the interest of understanding how well state-of-the-art global products and models can help to distinguish mCDR signals from [...]
Harnessing naturally occurring sodium carbonate and bicarbonate for gigatonne-scale carbon dioxide removal
Published: 2026-03-06
Subjects: Engineering
Ocean alkalinity enhancement is a promising carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approach, but scaling up to gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 per year will require safe, sustainable, and abundant alkaline feedstocks. Here, we propose the use of a relatively unexplored resource for OAE, namely naturally occurring sodium (bi)carbonates. We identified and mapped 109 such deposits globally, although quantitative [...]
Filling the monitoring gap: Aquatic ecosystem metabolism as a cost-effective, scalable tool for assessing marine carbon dioxide removal
Published: 2026-02-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) is an emerging climate mitigation solution increasingly recognized as necessary to supplement greenhouse gas emission reductions. Various mCDR methods, from biotic to abiotic measures, are being piloted, fueled by enthusiasm from governments and the private sector. As companies start to sell carbon credits, standards for monitoring, reporting, and verification [...]
MACROM: An Optimal Control Model for Balancing Climate Change Abatement and Damage Trade-offs
Published: 2026-02-11
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Climate, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment
The current pace of global emissions reduction is inadequate to meet the Paris Agreement temperature target of 1.5°C. While carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is increasingly viewed as necessary to meet these targets, questions remain about the optimal scale and timing of deployment when both costs and climate damages are considered. Here we present MACROM, an optimal control climate-economic model [...]
Long-term incubations reveal geochemical controls on wood biomass preservation at the anoxic sediment-water interface
Published: 2025-11-20
Subjects: Life Sciences
Ocean-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategies increasingly consider biomass burial in anoxic marine basins as a pathway for long-term carbon storage. To evaluate its stability and environmental impact, we conducted 14-month bottle incubations testing three configurations of terrestrial wood under anoxic conditions: suspended in the water column, placed on the sediment surface, and buried [...]
Unlocking Gigatonne-scale Carbon Dioxide Removal with strategic tipping point frameworks
Published: 2025-10-16
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Achieving global climate mitigation requires a rapid acceleration of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) to gigatonne (Gt) scales by 2040. Linear growth in climate solutions is insufficient to reach these targets, but system-change practices and leveraging interventions that trigger self-reinforcing feedbacks ("tipping points"), offer a solution. Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) in Brazil is uniquely [...]
Carbon removal trading can promote economic growth in the Global South but could undermine food and energy security
Published: 2025-07-06
Subjects: Engineering
A fundamental mismatch between countries’ carbon dioxide removal (CDR) responsibilities and their domestic capacities to fulfil them poses a major challenge to achieving the Paris Agreement’s long-term temperature goal. Interregional CDR trade offers a solution, yet there has been no quantitative assessment of how such trade could reshape the economies of exporting regions and impact their [...]
CO2-Based Leaching of Sulfidic Peridotite Drives Critical Mineral Mobilization and Carbonate Precipitation
Published: 2025-06-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology
The transition towards green energy requires both carbon dioxide removal and consistent supplies of energy-critical minerals. Injection and mineralization of supercritical CO2 at active mafic and ultramafic-hosted mines provides a potential avenue to achieve both, through the stable geologic storage of carbon and subsequent mobilization of critical metals. A sample from the Eagle occurrence, an [...]
Separate sectoral decarbonization policies accelerate climate action but could jeopardize key sustainability targets
Published: 2025-06-15
Subjects: Engineering
The Paris Agreement grants countries flexibility in designing their pathways to net-zero emissions, yet most have focused on economy-wide, cost-effective approaches without clearly defining the role of sectoral emission reductions and/or carbon dioxide removal (CDR). These blanket strategies prioritize low-cost sectors, leaving significant residual emissions and relying on uncertain, largely [...]
A realistic climate strategy
Published: 2025-04-12
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability
The international climate strategy is failing. Current policies will act too slowly to prevent rising temperatures from crossing critical climate tipping points. IPCC assessments underestimate the non-linear risks and catastrophic costs of overshooting Paris Agreement targets. Opponents of solar geoengineering cite concerns about moral hazard and other potential risks; however, at this juncture [...]
Quantifying potential carbon dioxide removal via enhanced weathering using porewater from a field trial in Scotland
Published: 2025-04-08
Subjects: Engineering
Enhanced weathering (EW) is cited as a promising carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategy, and is being rapidly commercialized. Rigorous monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) are essential to ensure carbon claims are accurate and carbon credits are not mis-sold. MRV protocols incorporate multiple approaches, including soil and porewater sampling. This paper calculates potential CDR from [...]
A practical metric for estimating the current climate forcing of natural mires
Published: 2025-02-13
Subjects: Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Commensuration of the radiative effects of different greenhouse gases (GHGs) is crucial for understanding the effects of land cover and ecosystem changes on the global climate. However, none of the current commensuration approaches are suitable for addressing the current climatic effect of mire ecosystems as compared to the situation in which such mires would not exist. The mire ecosystems have [...]
Carbon dioxide removal could perpetuate community-scale inequalities of U.S. air pollution in net-zero scenarios
Published: 2024-11-28
Subjects: Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies
Pathways to net-zero reduce GHG emissions and improve air quality, but the magnitude and distribution of these improvements will depend on specific mitigation decisions, such as the amount of carbon dioxide removals (CDR). Here, we combine a series of models and datasets to analyze community-scale PM2.5 impacts across the contiguous U.S. of net-zero scenarios with different levels of CDR. Both [...]