Fighting global warming by greenhouse gas removal: destroying atmospheric nitrous oxide thanks to synergies between two breakthrough technologies

Abstract

Even if humans stop discharging CO 2 into the atmosphere, the average global temperature will still increase during this century. A lot of research has been devoted to prevent and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions in the atmosphere, in order to mitigate the effects of climate change. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is one of the technologies that might help to limit emissions. In complement, direct CO 2 removal from the atmosphere has been proposed after the emissions have occurred. But, the removal of all the excess anthropogenic atmospheric CO 2 will not be enough, due to the fact that CO 2 outgases from the ocean as its solubility is dependent of its atmospheric partial pressure. Bringing back the Earth average surface temperature to pre-industrial levels would require the removal of all previously emitted CO 2 . Thus, the atmospheric removal of other greenhouse gases is necessary. This article proposes a combination of disrupting techniques to transform nitrous oxide (N 2 O), the third most important greenhouse gas (GHG) in terms of current radiative forcing, which is harmful for the ozone layer and possesses quite high global warming potential. Although several scientific publications cite “greenhouse gas removal,” to our knowledge, it is the first time innovative solutions are proposed to effectively remove N 2 O or other GHGs from the atmosphere other than CO 2 .