A Volcano, a Mystery, and a Path Forward
In June 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted. The cooling that followed was expected. What wasn’t expected was that roughly 18 gigatons of CO2 quietly vanished from the atmosphere over the next two years, and never came back.
Scientists have debated the cause for three decades without a satisfying answer. In a recent piece on the Climate Restoration Substack, Peter Fiekowsky walks through the leading theories and explains, methodically, why none of them hold up. More importantly, he points to what might actually explain it.
The short version: geography mattered. Of nine major eruptions in the last 500 years with similar cooling effects, only three produced a significant CO2 drop. The difference appears to come down to where the ash fell, specifically, whether it landed near the kind of ocean structures that can pull carbon into the deep and keep it there.
Those structures are the same downwelling ocean eddies that the Climate Restoration Alliance has been focused on as a vehicle for intentional carbon removal. The idea that nature may have already used them to remove 18 gigatons in two years is not a small claim. It suggests a testable, scalable, targeted approach to ocean-based carbon sequestration that the mainstream climate conversation has barely touched.
The peer-reviewed paper is in review. The data is already there.
Read Peter Fiekowsky’s full article, “The Pinatubo Pause: Why the Scientists Are Right. And Why They May Be Wrong,” on the Climate Restoration Substack.