Apart from proposals to destroy atmospheric methane or capturing it, some have suggested it could be possible to prevent methane from reaching the atmosphere or flaring it.
The built environment takes up an ever greater portion of the earth’s surface. This mostly unused surface area could be coated in albedo enhancing paints or material which would allow them to reflect incoming sunlight.
Black Carbon (BC), also known as soot, is produced through the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomaterials. Apart from its negative health impacts, BC also has significant climate effects because it generally has a lower albedo than its surroundings, which increases the amount of radiation absorbed both when BC is present in the atmosphere and when it is deposited on land (Stjern et al. 2017). Due to the large albedo differences, the effects of BC are especially significant in areas that are normally covered in snow or ice (Hadley and Kirchstetter 2012; Sand et al. 2016; Kang et al. 2020).
Direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) aims to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by taking it directly out of the air, and removing it from the carbon cycle.
