CO2 Sequestration and Storage in Antarctica: Effects on Global Redistribution

The climatological risk of continued increase in anthropogenic CO₂ into the global atmosphere may require extreme climate intervention.  The historic benchmark site of Mauna Loa now remains above 400 ppmv.  Interestingly, this potent GHG does not consist of much mass (1GtC = 0.5 ppmv of CO₂) and dry ice snow deposition in Antarctica would only occupy a compacted volume of 2km × 2km × 160 m.  Direct Air Capture through LN₂ closed-loop refrigeration at 1 bar of pressure has been proposed by Agee et al., (2013) and conceptually demonstrated in laboratory experimentation by Agee and Orton (2016).  CO₂ sequestration and storage in Antarctica introduces the concept of creating a CO₂ hole in the atmosphere that creates intriguing questions regarding 1) effect on global atmospheric dispersion rate of CO₂ to Antarctica, 2) compounded effects of successive years of sequestration leading to substantial decreases in atmospheric CO₂ greater than 10 ppmv, 3) climate sensitivity to reductions, based on climate model predictions, and 4) continued CO₂ reduction to 19^th century levels and investigation of associated climate hysteresis effects through climate model comparisons to future versus past climate with the same CO₂ content.  The first of these four project goals has deployed the global WRF (GWRF) model to examine the dispersion rate of CO₂ transport from the Northern Hemisphere to the Antarctic polar region and results will be discussed based on a number of sequestration scenarios.