Climate engineering to mitigate the projected 21st-century terrestrial drying of the Americas: a direct comparison of carbon capture and sulfur injection

To mitigate the projected global warming in the 21st century, it is well-recognized that society needs to cut CO2 emissions and other short-lived warming agents aggressively. However, to stabilize the climate at a warming level closer to the present day, such as the "well below 2 degrees C" aspiration in the Paris Agreement, a net-zero carbon emission by 2050 is still insufficient. The recent IPCC special report calls for a massive scheme to extract CO2 directly from the atmosphere, in addition to decarbonization, to reach negative net emissions at the mid-century mark. Another ambitious proposal is solar-radiation-based geoengineering schemes, including injecting sulfur gas into the stratosphere. Despite being in public debate for years, these two leading geoengineering schemes have not been directly compared under a consistent analytical framework using global climate models.