Brad Marston, together with Manning Assistant Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences and Environment and Society Daniel Ibarra, was recently featured in the New Scientist’s article “Carbon removal schemes on farms could change Earth’s reflectivity.”
Reflecting on the work, Marston says, “Adding charcoal to farmland, fertilizing the seas with iron and spreading rock dust are some of the approaches to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that are being explored to slow climate change. All of these require a significant fraction of Earth’s surface area to reach the enormous scales necessary to have an effect. We argue that an unexplored side effect, namely changes to the amount of sunlight that is absorbed by the altered surface, must be investigated as such radiative forcing may overwhelm the reduction in forcing from carbon dioxide removal."