Stabilizing permafrost by covering it

Roughly one-third of the incoming solar radiation is directly reflected back into space by the Earth’s atmosphere and surface albedo. Clouds play an important role in this, although their role is double as water droplets can also interfere with outgoing longwave radiation, thereby contributing to the greenhouse effect. Over open water clouds can make a particularly big difference as the albedo of the water is below 0.1, thereby absorbing most of the sun’s energy.

One of the main issues with methane removal is that atmospheric methane concentrations are very low. This means that very large volumes of air, and related energy demands, are required, making the use of ventilators like those used for DACCS (see direct air capture) more complicated (Nisbet-Jones et al. 2021).

Several high mountain communities around the world have a long history of building barriers and other constructions that trap or hold meltwater by refreezing it (Nüsser et al. 2019b).

Tropospheric Iron Salt Aerosol injection (ISAI) has recently received significant attention as a potential methane mitigation technique.

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.

It has been suggested that ice sheets could be stabilized by building physical structures that could artificially support and buttress them.