By Oscar Escobar - Original April 30, 2015
Last update September 10, 2015 (2)
Last update September 10, 2015 (2)
Recently
in an informal conversation with someone dear to me, I was asked to
summarize climate geoengineering in 140 characters or words. I took it
as meaning one twitt:
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I should have said: 'we like' to ignore that fact.
Two studies that encompass both the
Northern and Southern oceans partly explain some of the reasons of why I
have arrived at that conclusion. (See full abstracts and links below my
comments)
The results of the study centered on the Southern oceans:
Link: Ihttp://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.estlett.5b00007
The study centered on the Northern oceans states:
"Due to continuing growth in global shipping and no regulations regarding particles emissions over the open ocean, the input of potentially bioavailable iron from ship plumes is likely to increase during the next century. The model results suggest suggest that deposition of soluble iron from ships in 2100 contributes 30–60% of the soluble iron deposition over the high‐latitude North Atlantic and North Pacific".
This study prompted the New Scientist article "Sooty ships may be geoengineering by accident"
in which Jeff Hecht writes:
in which Jeff Hecht writes:
GEOENGINEERING is being tested - albeit inadvertently - in the north Pacific. Soot from oil-burning ships is dumping about 1000 tonnes of soluble iron per year across 6 million square kilometres of ocean, new research has revealed.
Fertilising the world's oceans with iron has been controversially proposed as a way of sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to curb global warming. Some geoengineers claim releasing iron into the sea will stimulate plankton blooms, which absorb carbon, but ocean processes are complex and difficult to monitor in tests.
"Experiments suggest you change the population of algae, causing a shift from fish-dominated to jellyfish-dominated ecosystems," says Alex Baker of the University of East Anglia, UK. Such concerns led the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to impose a moratorium on geoengineering experiments in 2010.
The annual ship deposition is much larger, if less concentrated, than the iron released in field tests carried out before the moratorium was in place. Yet because ship emissions are not intended to alter ocean chemistry, they do not violate the moratorium, says Jim Thomas of the ETC Group, a think tank that consults for the CBD. "If you intentionally drove oil-burning ships back and forth as a geoengineering experiment, that would contravene it."
"suggest that deposition of soluble iron from combustion sources contributes more than 40% of the total soluble iron deposition over significant portions of the open ocean in the Southern Hemisphere".
My comments:
As
I said before here on this blog and in my twitter feed: I think that
'we' are already geoengineering the oceans via iron fertilization (and
the atmosphere i.e. SRM in other posts).
Regardless
of the Intentionality issue, that implies that all the concerns related
to the environment i.e. marine ecosystems, and all the questions of
climate justice i.e. responsibilities/liabilities/reparations and all
the concerns like those voiced by The Convention on Biological Diversity
and groups like the ETC apply.
Apply
but are not governed; and they will not be governed as long as they
remain willfully ignored or under the shroud of being 'non-intentional'
effects.
The abstracts and links:
Global modeling study of potentially bioavailable iron input
from shipboard aerosol sources to the ocean
Akinori Ito1
Received 2 April 2012; revised 27 September 2012; accepted 4 November 2012; published 18 January 2013.
[1]
Iron (Fe) is an essential element for phytoplankton. The majority of iron is transported
from arid and semiarid regions to the open ocean, but it is mainly in an insoluble form.
Since most aquatic organisms can take up iron only in the dissolved form, aerosol iron
solubility is a key factor that can influence the air‐sea CO2 fluxes and thus climate.
Field
observations have shown relatively high iron solubility in aerosols influenced by
combustion sources, but specific emissions sources and their contributions to deposition
fluxes largely remain uncertain. Here a global chemical transport model was used to
investigate the effect of aerosol emissions from ship plumes on iron solubility in
particles from the combustion and dust sources.
The model results reveal that the oil
combustion from shipping mainly contributes to high iron solubility (>10%) at low iron
loading (1–110ngm–3
) observed over the high‐latitude North Atlantic Ocean, rather than the
other combustion sources from continental industrialized regions. Due to continuing growth
in global shipping and no regulations regarding particles emissions over the open ocean, the
input of potentially bioavailable iron from ship plumes is likely to increase during the next
century. The model results suggest that deposition of soluble iron from ships in 2100
contributes 30–60% of the soluble iron deposition over the high‐latitude North Atlantic and
North Pacific.
Citation: Ito, A. (2013), Global modeling study of potentially bioavailable iron input from shipboard aerosol sources to
the ocean, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 27, 1–10, doi: 10.1029/2012GB004378.
Atmospheric Processing of Combustion Aerosols as a Source of Bioavailable Iron
Yokohama Institute for Earth Sciences, JAMSTEC, Yokohama, Kanagawa 236-0001, Japan
Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett., 2015, 2 (3), pp 70–75
DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.5b00007
Publication Date (Web): February 2, 2015
Copyright © 2015 American Chemical Society
Abstract
Atmospheric
processing of combustion aerosols may promote transformation of
insoluble iron into soluble forms. Here, an explicit scheme for iron
dissolution of combustion aerosols due to photochemical reactions with
inorganic and organic acids in solution is implemented in an atmospheric
chemistry transport model to estimate the atmospheric sources of
bioavailable iron. The model results suggest that deposition of soluble
iron from combustion sources contributes more than 40% of the total
soluble iron deposition over significant portions of the open ocean in
the Southern Hemisphere. A sensitivity simulation using half the iron
dissolution rate for combustion aerosols results in relatively small
decreases in soluble iron deposition in the ocean, compared with the
large uncertainties associated with iron solubility at emission. More
accurate quantification of the soluble iron burdens near the source
regions and the open ocean is needed to improve the process-based
understanding of the chemical modification of iron-containing minerals.
One more study:
Added May 3 (My emphasys)
Sources, transport and deposition of
iron in the global atmosphere
R. Wang1,2,3, Y. Balkanski1,3, O. Boucher4, L. Bopp1, A.
Chappell5, P. Ciais1,3, D. Hauglustaine1, J. Peñuelas6,7, and S. Tao2,3
Abstract. Atmospheric deposition of iron (Fe) plays an
important role in controlling oceanic primary productivity. However, the
sources of Fe in the atmosphere are not well understood. In particular, the
combustion sources of Fe and their deposition over oceans are not accounted for
in current biogeochemical models of the carbon cycle. Here we used a
mass-balance method to estimate the emissions of Fe from the combustion of
fossil fuels and biomass by accounting for the Fe contents in fuel and the
partitioning of Fe during combustion. The emissions of Fe attached to aerosols
from combustion sources were estimated by particle size, and their
uncertainties were quantified by a Monte Carlo simulation. The emissions of Fe
from mineral sources were estimated using the latest soil mineralogical
database to date. As a result, the total
Fe emissions from combustion averaged for 1960–2007 were estimated to be 5.1 Tg
yr−1 (90% confidence of 2.2 to 11.5). Of these emissions, 2, 33 and 65%
were emitted in particles <1 μm (PM1), 1–10 μm (PM1−10), and >10 μm
(PM>10), respectively, compared to total Fe emissions from mineral sources
of 41.0 Tg yr−1. For combustion sources,
different temporal trends were found in fine and medium-to-coarse particles,
with a notable increase in Fe emissions in PM1 and PM1−10 since 2000 due to a
rapid increase from motor vehicles. These emissions have been introduced in
a global 3-D transport model run at a spatial resolution of of 0.94° latitude
by 1.28° longitude to evaluate our estimation of Fe emissions. The modelled Fe
concentrations were compared to measurements at 825 sampling stations. The
deviation between modelled and observed Fe concentrations attached to aerosols
at the surface was within a factor of two at most sampling stations, and the
deviation was within a factor of 1.5 at sampling stations dominated by
combustion sources. We analyzed the relative contribution of combustion sources
to total Fe concentrations over different regions of the world. The new
mineralogical database led to a modest improvement in the simulation relative
to station data even in dust dominated regions, but could provide useful
information on the chemical forms of Fe in dust for coupling with ocean biota
models. We estimated a total Fe
deposition sink of 8.4 Tg yr−1 over global oceans, 6.6% of which originated
from the combustion sources. The
higher than previously estimated combustion-related Fe emissions implies a
larger atmospheric input of soluble Fe over the northern Atlantic and northern
Pacific Oceans, which is expected to enhance the biological carbon pump in
those regions.
Citation: Wang, R., Balkanski, Y., Boucher, O., Bopp, L.,
Chappell, A., Ciais, P., Hauglustaine, D., Peñuelas, J., and Tao, S.: Sources,
transport and deposition of iron in the global atmosphere, Atmos. Chem. Phys.
Discuss., 15, 7645-7705, doi:10.5194/acpd-15-7645-2015, 2015.
PDF full study:
Updates:
September 10, 2015
Delivery of anthropogenic bioavailable iron from mineral dust and combustion aerosols to the ocean
September 10, 2015 (2)
(This may be related to the anthropogenic bioavailable iron from combustion)
Southern Ocean carbon sink bounces back with renewed vigour, study says
Sep 2015, 19:00 by Robert McSweeney - The Carbon Brief http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/09/southern-ocean-carbon-sink-bounces-back-with-renewed-vigour/
Delivery of anthropogenic bioavailable iron from mineral dust and combustion aerosols to the ocean
(This may be related to the anthropogenic bioavailable iron from combustion)
Southern Ocean carbon sink bounces back with renewed vigour, study says
Sep 2015, 19:00 by Robert McSweeney - The Carbon Brief http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/09/southern-ocean-carbon-sink-bounces-back-with-renewed-vigour/
Delivery of anthropogenic bioavailable iron from mineral dust and combustion aerosols to the ocean
A. Ito1 and Z. Shi2 2015 (doi:10.5194/acpd-15-23051-2015)
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/23051/2015/acpd-15-23051-2015.pdfSeptember 10, 2015
Delivery of anthropogenic bioavailable iron from mineral dust and combustion aerosols to the ocean
A. Ito1 and Z. Shi2 2015 (doi:10.5194/acpd-15-23051-2015)
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/23051/2015/acpd-15-23051-2015.pdf
July 22, 2015
Natural aerosols explain seasonal and spatial patterns of Southern Ocean cloud albedo
Science Advances 17 Jul 2015: Vol. 1, no. 6, e1500157 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1500157
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/6/e1500157
June 16, 2015
July 22, 2015
Natural aerosols explain seasonal and spatial patterns of Southern Ocean cloud albedo
Science Advances 17 Jul 2015: Vol. 1, no. 6, e1500157 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1500157
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/6/e1500157
June 16, 2015
Framing an ethics of climate management for the anthropocene
Christopher J. Preston -Date: 26 Jun 2014 - DOI 10.1007/s10584-014-1182-4
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