Abstract
Climate change is defned as the shift in climate patterns mainly caused by greenhouse gas emissions from natural systems and
human activities. So far, anthropogenic activities have caused about 1.0 °C of global warming above the pre-industrial level
and this is likely to reach 1.5 °C between 2030 and 2052 if the current emission rates persist. In 2018, the world encountered
315 cases of natural disasters which are mainly related to the climate. Approximately 68.5 million people were afected, and
economic losses amounted to $131.7 billion, of which storms, foods, wildfres and droughts accounted for approximately
93%. Economic losses attributed to wildfres in 2018 alone are almost equal to the collective losses from wildfres incurred
over the past decade, which is quite alarming. Furthermore, food, water, health, ecosystem, human habitat and infrastructure
have been identifed as the most vulnerable sectors under climate attack. In 2015, the Paris agreement was introduced with
the main objective of limiting global temperature increase to 2 °C by 2100 and pursuing eforts to limit the increase to 1.5 °C.
This article reviews the main strategies for climate change abatement, namely conventional mitigation, negative emissions
and radiative forcing geoengineering. Conventional mitigation technologies focus on reducing fossil-based CO2 emissions.
Negative emissions technologies are aiming to capture and sequester atmospheric carbon to reduce carbon dioxide levels.
Finally, geoengineering techniques of radiative forcing alter the earth’s radiative energy budget to stabilize or reduce global
temperatures. It is evident that conventional mitigation eforts alone are not sufcient to meet the targets stipulated by the
Paris agreement; therefore, the utilization of alternative routes appears inevitable. While various technologies presented
may still be at an early stage of development, biogenic-based sequestration techniques are to a certain extent mature and can
be deployed immediately.
Original language | English |
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Number of pages | 26 |
Journal | Environmental Chemistry Letters |
Early online date | 30 Jul 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Early online date - 30 Jul 2020 |