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REVIEW article

Front. Clim.
Sec. Carbon Dioxide Removal
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fclim.2024.1506181
This article is part of the Research Topic Concept Papers from the World Climate Research Programme: The Future of Climate Research View all 10 articles

Perspectives and challenges of marine carbon dioxide removal

Provisionally accepted
Andreas Oschlies Andreas Oschlies 1*Lennart Thomas Bach Lennart Thomas Bach 2Katja Fennel Katja Fennel 3Jean-Pierre Gattuso Jean-Pierre Gattuso 4,5Nadine Mengis Nadine Mengis 1
  • 1 GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel, Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres (HZ), Kiel, Germany
  • 2 Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia, Hobart, Australia
  • 3 Department of Oceanography, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Halifax, Canada
  • 4 Institut de la Mer de Villefranche, Sorbonne Universités, Villefranche-sur-Mer, France
  • 5 Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, Paris, France, Paris, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2 o C requires drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and the balancing of any remaining emissions by carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Due to uncertainties about the potential and durability of many land-based approaches to deliver sufficient CDR, marine CDR options are receiving more and more interest. We present the current state of knowledge regarding the potentials, risks, side effects as well as challenges associated with technical feasibility, governance, monitoring, reporting and accounting of marine CDR, covering a range of biotic and geochemical approaches. We specifically discuss to what extent a comparison with direct injection of CO2 into seawater, which had been proposed decades ago and is now prohibited by international agreements, may provide guidance for evaluating some of the biotic marine CDR approaches.

    Keywords: Carbon dioxide removal, marine geoengineering, Ocean carbon uptake, Blue carbon, Ocean fertilization, ocean alkalinity enhancement. (Min

    Received: 04 Oct 2024; Accepted: 13 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Oschlies, Bach, Fennel, Gattuso and Mengis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Andreas Oschlies, GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel, Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres (HZ), Kiel, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.