Geoengineering: Manmade Antarctic snowstorm 'could save coastal cities from rising seas'
Source: The Guardian
Manmade Antarctic snowstorm 'could save coastal cities from rising seas'
Blowing trillions of tonnes of snow on to ice sheet could halt its collapse, researchers say
Damian Carrington Environment editor
@dpcarrington
Wed 17 Jul 2019 19.00 BST Last modified on Thu 18 Jul 2019 00.50 BST
Spraying trillions of tons of snow over west Antarctica could halt the ice sheet’s collapse and save coastal cities across the world from sea level rise, according to a new study.
The colossal geoengineering project would need energy from at least 12,000 wind turbines to power giant seawater pumps and snow cannons, and would destroy a unique natural reserve. The scientists are not advocating for such a project, but said its apparent “absurdity” reflects the extraordinary scale of threat from rising sea level.
Ending the burning of fossil fuels remains the key to tackling the climate crisis and sea level rise, the researchers said. But the carbon emissions pumped into the atmosphere so far may already have doomed the west Antarctic ice sheet.
A series of earlier studies concluded the accelerating loss of ice from the region could not be stopped by emissions cuts any more, meaning the oceans will rise by three metres in the coming centuries. This would leave major cities across the world, from New York to Kolkata to Shanghai, below sea level.
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The research, published in the journal Science Advances, used computer models to calculate how much water would need to be pumped from the ocean on to the top of the ice sheet and then sprayed as snow to achieve this stabilisation.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/17/manmade-antarctic-snowstorm-could-save-coastal-cities-from-rising-seas
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Related: Stabilizing the West Antarctic Ice Sheet by surface mass deposition (Science Advances)
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