IPCC Expert Meeting on Geoengineering

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Annex 4: Poster Abstracts Understanding the potential of ocean iron fertilization to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide. Ken O. Buesseler 1 , Richard S. Lampitt 2 , Stéphane Blain 3 , Fei Chai 4 , Kenneth H. Coale 5 , Minhan Dai 6 , Hein J.W. De Baar 7 , David M. Karl 8 , Margaret Leinen 9 , Maeve Lohan 10 , Lewis Rothstein 11 , Thomas Trull 12 , Dan Whaley 13 , Don Wuebbles 14 * and Meng Zhou 15 . 1 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA 2 National Oceanography Centre, UK 3 Université Pierre et Marie Curie, France 4 University of Maine, USA 5 Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, USA 6 Xiamen University, China 7 NIOZ-‐Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Netherlands 8 University of Hawaii, USA 9 Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, USA 10 University of Plymouth, Marine Institute, UK 11 University of Rhode Island, USA 12 Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, Australia 13 Hypothes.is, USA 14 University of Illinois at Urbana-‐Champaign, USA 15 University of Massachusetts Boston, USA The reservoirs of carbon that interact on millennial time scales are those in the ocean, the atmosphere and over the top meter of the land. Of these millennial reservoirs, the ocean is by far the largest: 36 Tt as opposed to 0.7 Tt for the atmosphere and 2.3 Tt for land (Sarmiento and Gruber, 2002). By comparison, current estimates of the fossil hydrocarbon reservoir are of the order 4 Tt. Over tens of millennia, almost all of the CO 2 released into the atmosphere from fossil fuel use will enter the vast oceanic reservoir but before it does so, the enhanced atmospheric CO 2 concentrations will cause substantial environmental perturbation largely driven by greenhouse warming and ocean acidification. Regardless of the strategy adopted for fossil fuel use over the coming decades, there will be an increase in atmospheric CO 2 followed by a much slower decrease, such that after 10,000 years, atmospheric CO 2 levels will still be substantially higher than pre-industrial levels (Archer, 2005; Solomon et al., 2009). In the context of geoengineering, the objectives of CO 2 reduction techniques are to reduce the rate of CO 2 increase and to reduce the ultimate height of the CO 2 peak so that human adaptation to environmental changes will be easier to achieve. From a carbon system perspective, because the oceans represent such a large reservoir of carbon, as well as roughly ¼ of the atmospheric CO 2 uptake, small perturbations of the system could potentially result in large changes to the carbon balance. From the oceanic geoengineering perspective, the objective of ocean carbon sequestration would be to develop ways in which the oceans can take up carbon at a faster rate than they currently do but with predictable and acceptable consequences. The productivity of the oceans and hence their capacity to sequester CO 2 from the atmosphere is limited over large areas by the micronutrient iron. More than thirteen large scale open ocean addition experiments have been conducted to examine the effect of iron addition to the marine environment. There have also been several studies of ocean regions where there are natural supplies of iron (from islands or volcanic ash) in generally high nutrient, low chlorophyll (HNLC) regions. The conclusion from these experiments is that relief of iron stress does increase the biomass of marine phytoplankton. The effects of this biomass increase include a reduction in the concentration of CO 2 in the surface waters and potentially a local enhanced uptake of CO 2 from the atmosphere. Depending very much on the location, time of year of the experiments, and duration of the experiments, these iron additions have led to variable increases in the export of carbon from the upper ocean and sequestration of it into the deep ocean where it will be isolated from the atmosphere for decades to centuries (Boyd, 2008; Buesseler et al., 2008; Pollard et al., 2009; R. S Lampitt et al., 2010). The experiments to date were not planned from the perspective of climate engineering and conclusions from them about the potential of this approach as a means of reducing atmospheric CO 2 concentrations have large uncertainties. The experiments have usually not been of adequate duration to determine whether sequestration occurred and have not been of sufficient areal coverage in order to reduce edge effects and to facilitate study of relationships between upper ocean processes and those at depth. In fact, few of the experiments measured carbon flux out of the surface water. Furthermore <strong>IPCC</strong> <strong>Expert</strong> <strong>Meeting</strong> on Geoengineering - 65
Annex 4: Poster Abstracts they have not been embedded in adequate coupled models of ocean physics and biogeochemistry to extrapolate results beyond the experimental area. Few ocean iron addition experiments have addressed processes that would allow a better understanding of the unintended consequences of deliberate additions. This last point is of particular concern and has been a major feature during the recent discussion of a risk assessment framework for experimentation by the London Convention and London Protocol. There is no doubt that several consequences of ocean iron fertilization will occur beyond simply the uptake of CO 2. Some of these such as a decrease in deep water pH and in oxygen concentration are inevitable and relatively easy to predict. The potential of other unintended consequences -- such as the generation of nitrous oxide from organic matter degradation at depth, the generation of dimethyl sulfide and methane or the growth of phytoplankton which has the capability of releasing harmful toxins -- has much larger uncertainty at present. Some of these consequences are undesirable and on a large scale may be considered unacceptable. Given the uncertainties, there is an urgent requirement to carry out more studies on ocean iron fertilization with three clear objectives 1. To develop coupled global scale computation models so that predictions can become more reliable and so that in situ experiments can be carried out efficiently and effectively 2. To carry out experiments on a sufficiently large scale and duration to determine the extent of carbon sequestration, including at what efficiencies, depths and hence time scales this would take place. 3. To explore in considerable detail the complete consequences of ocean iron fertilization, and not just the magnitude of carbon uptake from the atmosphere and sequestration in the deep ocean. It is only when these activities have been completed that it will be possible to determine whether ocean iron fertilization has the potential to remove substantial amounts of atmospheric CO 2, whether there are harmful consequences and whether these consequences can be predicted with an uncertainty that is acceptably low. The ISIS consortium (In Situ Iron Studies) of 13 institutions worldwide was formed in 2011 specifically to promote such studies so that informed decisions will be possible in the future. The mission statement is: “To resolve the impact of iron fertilization on marine ecosystems, to quantify its potential for removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and to improve our collective understanding of the changing ocean.” http://isisconsortium.org/ References Archer D., 2005: Fate of fossil fuel CO 2 in geologic time. Journal of Geophysical Research-Part C-Oceans 110, 1–6. Boyd P.W., 2008: Implications of large-scale iron fertilization of the oceans. Marine Ecology Progress Series 364, 213–218. Buesseler K.O., S.C. Doney, D.M. Karl, P.W. Boyd, K. Caldeira, F. Chai, K.H. Coale, H.J.W. de Baar, P.G. Falkowski, K.S. Johnson, R. S. Lampitt, A.F. Michaels, S.W.A. Naqvi, V. Smetacek, S. Takeda, and A.J. Watson, 2008: ocean iron fertilization—moving forward in a sea of uncertainty. Science 319, 162. Lampitt R. S, E.P. Achterberg, T.R. Anderson, J. A Hughes, M.D. Iglesias-Rodriguez, B.A. Kelly-Gerreyn, M. Lucas, E. E Popova, R. Sanders, J.G. Shepherd, D. Smythe-Wright, and A. Yool, 2010: Ocean Fertilization: A Potential Means of Geoengineering? In: Geo-Engineering Climate Change: Environmental Necessity or Pandora’s Box? J.M.T. Thompson, B. Launder, (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. pp.180. Pollard R.T., I. Salter, R.J. Sanders, M.I. Lucas, C.M. Moore, R.A. Mills, P.J. Statham, J.T. Allen, A.R. Baker, D.C.E. Bakker, M.A. Charette, S. Fielding, G.R. Fones, M. French, A.E. Hickman, R.J. Holland, J. Alan Hughes, T.D. Jickells, Richard S. Lampitt, P.J. Morris, F.H. N|[eacute]|d|[eacute]|lec, M. Nielsd|[oacute]|ttir, H. Planquette, Ekaterina E. Popova, A.J. Poulton, J.F. Read, S. Seeyave, T. Smith, M. Stinchcombe, S. Taylor, S. Thomalla, H.J. Venables, R. Williamson, and M.V. Zubkov, 2009: Southern Ocean deep-water carbon export enhanced by natural iron fertilization. Nature 457, 577–580. (DOI: 10.1038/nature07716). <strong>IPCC</strong> <strong>Expert</strong> <strong>Meeting</strong> on Geoengineering - 66
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Summary of the Synthesis Report 1.
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IPCC Expert Meeting on Geoengineering

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