Climate change: plan to save Arctic sea ice – 03/17/2024 – Environment

Amid sea ice off the coast of northern Canada, scientists watch as salty water is pumped over the frozen ocean.

Their goal? Slow down global warming.

As sea ice disappears, the dark surface of the ocean can absorb more energy from the Sun, which in turn accelerates warming even further. Therefore, researchers want to thicken it to prevent it from melting.

This is one of the craziest areas of geoengineering research: deliberately intervening in the Earth’s climate system to try to neutralize the damage caused by human action.

Geoengineering encompasses more consolidated efforts to trap planet-warming gases, such as planting more trees and burying carbon underground.

But experimental measures aim to go one step further, seeking to reduce the energy absorbed by the Earth.

Many scientists strongly oppose the method, warning that such attempts divert attention from the most necessary measure, which is reducing carbon emissions, and could cause more harm than good.

But a small number of advocates say the approach could help the planet.

The ultimate goal of the Arctic experiment is to thicken sea ice enough to slow or even reverse the melting already observed, says Shaun Fitzgerald, whose team at the University of Cambridge’s Climate Repair Center is behind the project.

Will it work or will it be, as one scientist put it, “pretty crazy”?

“We actually don’t know enough to determine whether this is a good or bad idea,” admits Fitzgerald.

Researchers have been facing harsh conditions in Cambridge Bay, a small Canadian village in the Arctic Circle.

“It’s very cold,” says Andrea Ceccolini, from Real Ice, the British company leading the trip. She gave an interview to the BBC via Zoom, with a spotty connection from inside a white tent.

“It’s around -30ºC with strong wind, which takes the wind chill to -45ºC.”

They are boring a hole that naturally forms in winter in the sea ice and pumping about 1,000 liters of seawater per minute across the surface.

Exposed to cold winter air, seawater quickly freezes, helping to thicken the ice at the surface. Water also compacts snow.

Because fresh snow acts as a good insulating layer, ice can now also form more easily at the bottom in contact with the ocean.

“The idea is that the thicker the ice [no final do inverno]the longer it will survive when we enter the thaw season”, explains Ceccolini.

By the time they gave the interview at the end of the trip, they had already seen the ice thicken by a few tens of centimeters throughout their small study area. The ice will be monitored by local residents over the coming months.

But it’s still too early to say whether their approach can really make a difference in the rapid decline of Arctic sea ice.

“The vast majority of polar scientists think this will never work,” warns Martin Siegert, an experienced glaciologist at the University of Exeter who is not involved in the project.

One problem is that saltier ice can melt more quickly in the summer.

And there is also the enormous logistical challenge of scaling up the project to a significant level — one estimate suggests that around 10 million wind-powered pumps would be needed to thicken the sea ice in just a tenth of the Arctic.

“In my opinion, it’s crazy that this can be done at scale for the entire Arctic Ocean,” says Julienne Stroeve, professor of polar observation and modeling at University College London.

Some of the experimental geoengineering suggestions include trying to make clouds more reflective by generating more sea spray and mimicking volcanic eruptions to reflect more of the Sun’s energy back into space.

Several scientists — including UN climate and meteorological bodies — have warned that these approaches could pose serious risks, including disrupting global weather patterns. Many researchers want to see them banned altogether.

“Geoengineering technologies bring enormous uncertainties and create new risks for ecosystems and people,” explains Lili Fuhr, director of the Fossil Economy Program at the Center for International Environmental Law.

“The Arctic is essential to sustaining our planetary systems: pumping seawater onto sea ice on a large scale could alter ocean chemistry and threaten the fragile web of life.”

And there is a more fundamental and widespread concern with these types of projects.

“The real danger is that it provides a distraction, and people with vested interests will use this as an excuse to continue burning fossil fuels,” warns Professor Siegert.

“Frankly, it’s crazy and needs to be stopped. The way to solve this crisis is to decarbonize: it’s our best and only way forward.”

Arctic researchers are acutely aware of these concerns. They emphasize that they are simply testing the technology and would not release it more widely until the risks are better known.

“We are not here promoting this as the solution to climate change in the Arctic,” says Fitzgerald.

“We’re saying it could be [parte disso]but we need to find out a lot more before society can decide whether it’s a sensible thing to do or not.”

Researchers agree that geoengineering is not a silver bullet for combating climate change and that drastic cuts in fossil fuels and carbon emissions are very important to avoid the worst consequences of warming.

But they stress that even with swift action, the world still faces a difficult future.

The Arctic Ocean is likely to be effectively free of sea ice by the end of summer at least once by 2050, and possibly even earlier.

“We need other solutions,” argues PhD student Jacob Pantling, a researcher at the Climate Repair Center who braved the freezing winds in Cambridge Bay.

“We have to reduce emissions, but even if we do it as quickly as possible, the Arctic will still melt.”