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Evidence is mounting that the climate is changing because of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide¹ with the potential that global warming and ocean acidification may significantly harm the ocean environment and the ecosystem services we depend on². In the absence of a global agreement to limit emissions, all options must be considered to minimize these potential impacts¹. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which requires the capture and storage of atmospheric carbon, is one potential technological solution to help mitigate high atmospheric carbon dioxide. Writing in Nature Climate Change, Sabine Mathesius and colleagues explore the ability of CDR to mitigate global warming and ocean acidification³. Although the thought of deliberately manipulating the climate by CDR may be unpalatable to many, it is necessary that such options be evaluated to enable informed choices of the viable ways to tackle our carbon dioxide problem.

The study by Mathesius et al.³ explores whether CDR under high CO₂ emissions can achieve an environmental outcome similar to a rapid transition to low-carbon energy use (that is, the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6 scenario). For their reference simulation with CDR they use the 'business as usual' high carbon emissions scenario (RCP8.5 extended⁴) from the present day to 2700. They show, consistent with other computer simulations, that under such a scenario the ocean environment will undergo substantial changes. By the year 2500, the global surface ocean warms by more than 5 °C and the global surface pH declines by more than 0.6 units from the pre-industrial values. Such large changes in the ocean environment have the potential to be catastrophic for many marine organisms, as is evident from the numerous species extinctions that occurred during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, when global temperatures and carbon dioxide levels had a similar magnitude of change⁵.

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1. IPCC Summary for Policymakers in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).
2. Hennige, S., Roberts, M. & Williamson, P. (eds) An Updated Synthesis of the Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Marine Biodiversity (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Technical Series no. 75, 2014).
3. Mathesius, S., Hofmann, M., Caldeira, K. & Schellnhuber, H. J. Nature Clim. Change 5, 1107–1113 (2015).
4. Meinshausen, M. et al. Climatic Change 109, 213–241 (2011).
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5. Pelejero, C., Calvo, E. & Hoegh-Guldberg, O. Trends Ecol. Evol. 25, 332–344 (2010).
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