Direct cooling of the atmosphere by heat transfer

So far, attempts to mitigate global warming have been based exclusively on the reduction of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. That of course eliminates the root cause of global warming. However, one of the problems with this approach is that the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is very long and the effect of the CO2 emission reduction on atmospheric temperature decrease will only become meaningful after many decades.In this work I propose to reduce or even eliminate the increase of global surface air temperature (GSAT) by removing sensible heat from the atmosphere and transferring it to media outside the atmosphere such as water or land mass. One of the main advantages of atmospheric heat removal is that unlike CO2 emission reduction, it has an immediate effect on atmospheric temperature. Also, the proposed technical solutions for heat removal from the atmosphere are simple, inexpensive, and well developed.Usually, the first reaction to my proposed solution is: You cannot mitigate global warming by transferring heat from one medium to another! Actually, I propose to mitigate just the atmospheric global warming which currently is the main cause of climatic devastation. The atmospheric heat will be transferred to a heat sink (the ocean and/or land) having at least 1000 times larger heat capacity; the heating effect of the heat sink will be negligible, as shown in my work.Another question is: would heat transfer to the ocean cause change its temperature and/or ocean currents? Currently, our society dumps 0.25 ZJ/year of heat to water (ocean and inland), which is almost twice the amount (0.13 ZJ/year) needed to transfer to the ocean to stop atmospheric global warming. And the current anthropogenic heat input to water is not considered a climate change or ocean change factor at all, for example by the IPCC.Warming of the ocean surface is another potential question. My work shows a method of transferring heat to the ocean without increasing its surface temperature at all. The only parameter that will change is the increase of mixed layer by 3 cm/year.In order to stop global warming of the atmosphere, i.e., to flatten the GSAT vs. time curve, the total cost of the heat exchangers for 10 000 atmospheric cooling stations, located around the globe, is expected to be as low as $8.4 Billion. The area required for each cooling station will be between 0.01 and 0.5 km2.The main disadvantage of direct atmospheric cooling is that it cannot be used indefinitely. Heat sinks cannot be heated for more than 5-10 decades to avoid overheating. Therefore, the proposed method will act as a “bridge” between now and the time when carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced, when carbon capture and storage becomes meaningful on a planetary scale, and/or until technology for the transport of long-wave electromagnetic energy to space is developed.

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