Simulating the Use of Agriculture as a Nature-Based Carbon Capture Solution for Mitigating Climate Change

Unmitigated climate change is expected to have catastrophic impacts on our way of life, causing governments and corporations to step in to pledge to reduce our emissions. However, to prevent warming beyond 2°C above pre-industrial levels, emissions reductions will likely not be enough, so we will need to take carbon dioxide directly out of the atmosphere, such as through planting more forests or changing how we do agriculture. Using existing agricultural practices, such as adding the ash of leftover crops to the soil, we can account for a considerable amount of the carbon dioxide removal necessary to meet this goal. However, we know very little about how well this works, and the impacts it may have on the climate. In this study, we will answer these questions by performing numerical simulations of agricultural carbon dioxide removal under some likely future emissions and removal scenarios. We expect to find that it has a considerable effect on reducing the peak warming of the future climate. Furthermore, we will simulate how climate change affects agriculture itself. This research will be extremely beneficial to our understanding of climate change mitigation, and relationship between agriculture and the climate.

Faculty Supervisor:

Damon Matthews

Student:

Partner:

Microsoft Canada

Discipline:

Earth science

Sector:

Information and cultural industries; Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

Concordia University

Program: