Temporary carbon dioxide removal to offset short-lived climate forcers
Yue He, Keywan Riahi, Matthew J. Gidden, Shilong Piao, Tao Wang, Thomas Gasser · 2026
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Description
Yue He and colleagues argue that temporary carbon removal can fairly offset short-lived climate pollutants, though never carbon dioxide itself, in a 2026 analysis. Removing carbon from the air is central to Paris Agreement goals, but most removal today stores carbon only temporarily. Policy has often treated a temporary ton as equal to a permanent one, which the physics does not support.
The authors show the mismatch is far smaller for short-lived forcers such as methane, because their warming fades on similar timescales and the compensation ratio barely depends on the accounting horizon. Offsetting one kilogram of methane takes 498 kilograms of carbon dioxide stored for twenty years, or 101 kilograms stored for a century, in their calculations. They propose a lifetime threshold separating pollutants that temporary removal can cover from those it cannot. Farms, where methane dominates, are a prime use case.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yue He, Keywan Riahi, Matthew J. Gidden, Shilong Piao, Tao Wang, Thomas Gasser |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 48 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |