Damping Storms, Reducing Warming, And Capturing Carbon with Floating, Alkalizing, Reflective Glass Tiles

Hurricane Harvey in 2017 caused $125 billion in damages in the U.S. (NOAA 2021).  Could we spread reflective glass foam tiles on the north Atlantic gyre to cost-effectively reduce storm damage and reflect solar energy to space?  The tiles might be made of sand from the Sahara desert with energy from photovoltaic panels.  The tiles can be designed to slowly release an alkalizer to raise the pH of the water surface to increase absorbance of atmospheric CO2.  Because surface currents in gyres converge toward the center, the half-life before washing onto beaches might be as high as five years.  Tiles washed onto beaches may be collected and redeployed.  When they break and erode, the tiles revert to sand.  Considering the benefits of reducing tropical storm damage, removing CO2 from the atmosphere, and reflecting solar energy to space, making and deploying such tiles in the north Atlantic gyre may be cost effective.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Not applicable

The datasets used in this study are openly available at [repository link] and the source code is available on GitHub at [GitHub link].

This work did not receive any external funding.