Seeding oceans with volcanic ash could be new tool to tackle climate change

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Source: © Tom Gernon/University of Southampton

Tephra could encourage phytoplankton blooms that could potentially sequester huge amounts of carbon dioxide

Dumping volcanic ash into the ocean could boost the rate at which carbon is drawn out of the atmosphere and sequestered in marine sediments, researchers from the UK and Germany have proposed. The process, they say, would be simple to implement, requires no changes to land usage – unlike, say, reforestation programmes – and is significantly cheaper than other geoengineering approaches.