Global environmental implications of atmospheric methane removal through chlorine-mediated chemistry-climate interactions

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  • Qinyi Li
  • Daphne Meidan
  • Peter Hess
  • Juan A. Añel
  • Carlos A. Cuevas
  • Scott Doney
  • Rafael P. Fernandez
  • Maarten van Herpen
  • Lena Höglund-Isaksson
  • Johnson, Matthew Stanley
  • Douglas E. Kinnison
  • Jean François Lamarque
  • Thomas Röckmann
  • Natalie M. Mahowald
  • Alfonso Saiz-Lopez
Atmospheric methane is both a potent greenhouse gas and photochemically active, with approximately equal anthropogenic and natural sources. The addition of chlorine to the atmosphere has been proposed to mitigate global warming through methane reduction by increasing its chemical loss. However, the potential environmental impacts of such climate mitigation remain unexplored. Here, sensitivity studies are conducted to evaluate the possible effects of increasing reactive chlorine emissions on the methane budget, atmospheric composition and radiative forcing. Because of non-linear chemistry, in order to achieve a reduction in methane burden (instead of an increase), the chlorine atom burden needs to be a minimum of three times the estimated present-day burden. If the methane removal target is set to 20%, 45%, or 70% less global methane by 2050 compared to the levels in the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 scenario (RCP8.5), our modeling results suggest that additional chlorine fluxes of 630, 1250, and 1880 Tg Cl/year, respectively, are needed. The results show that increasing chlorine emissions also induces significant changes in other important climate forcers. Remarkably, the tropospheric ozone decrease is large enough that the magnitude of radiative forcing decrease is similar to that of methane. Adding 630, 1250, and 1880 Tg Cl/year to the RCP8.5 scenario, chosen to have the most consistent current-day trends of methane, will decrease the surface temperature by 0.2, 0.4, and 0.6 °C by 2050, respectively. The quantity and method in which the chlorine is added, its interactions with climate pathways, and the potential environmental impacts on air quality and ocean acidity, must be carefully considered before any action is taken.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
Artikelnummer4045
TidsskriftNature Communications
Vol/bind14
Udgave nummer1
Antal sider10
ISSN2041-1723
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2023

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
Q.L., C.A.C., and A.S.-L. are funded by the European Research Council Executive Agency under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program (Project ERC-2016- COG 726349 CLIMAHAL to A.S.-L.). D.M., N.M.M., and P.H. would like to acknowledge the support of Silverlining and Spark Climate Solutions. RPF would like to thank the financial support from ANPCyT (PICT 2019–2187). J.A.A. is supported by a grant from the Spanish State Research Agency (Project ODEON—TED2021-132172B-I00 to J.A.A.) and his work at IQFR-CSIC is supported by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Universities and the Universidade de Vigo. The EPhysLab is funded by the Xunta de Galicia under Grant ED431C2021/44. The CESM project is supported primarily by the National Science Foundation (NSF). This work is supported by grant no. AGS-1906719 from the Atmospheric Chemistry Division of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). M.S.J. and M.v.H would like to acknowledge support from Silverlining and Spark Climate Solutions. This material is based upon work supported by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), which is a major facility sponsored by NSF under the Cooperative Agreement 1852977. Computing resources, support, and data storage were provided by the Climate Simulation Laboratory at NCAR’s Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL), sponsored by the NSF. We thank the helpful suggestions from David Mann and Erika Reinhardt at Spark Climate Solutions.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).

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