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Did you know that a staggering 680 billion tonnes (750 billion tons) of ice is melting every year due to climate change and global warming? The sea ice around Antarctica alone shrank to the smallest area ever recorded in early 2022. And it's in the polar regions that scientists are looking to develop one of the most radical methods ever devised to reverse global warming: the refreezing of the North and South Poles!
It sounds like a crazy idea straight out of science fiction, but researchers believe the concept is feasible and have even published a white paper outlining the methodology such a project would entail. So, how exactly do you refreeze the poles?
According to data published by New Scientist, the sea ice around Antarctica shrank to the smallest area ever recorded in early 2022.
The temperature hit -12.2°C (53.96°F) on March 18, 2022, at Concordia research station, 1600 km (994 mi) from the South Pole. That is warm for the region. Very warm.
Meanwhile, satellite observations revealed that the Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum extent (lowest amount of ice for the year) on September 18, 2022.
In 2022, the ice cover shrank to an area of 4.67 million sq km (1.80 million sq mi), the 10th-lowest in 44 years of observations. The satellite record is maintained by the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
As astonishing 680 billion tonnes (750 billion tons) of ice is melting every year due to global warming, according to The World Counts.
To put that figure into perspective, that's 21,772 tonnes (24,000 tons) of melting water being added to the world's oceans every single second, or the same as 10 Olympic-sized swimming pools 24/7 365.
On August 1, 2019, Greenland lost 11.3 billion tonnes (12.5 billion tons) of ice in a single day—the largest amount of ice ever lost on a single day!
In August 2021 Breidamerkurjokull (pictured), among the biggest of the dozens of glaciers that descend from Vatnajokull ice cap in Iceland, receded to the point where meltwater created Jokulsarlon, which is now the country's biggest lake. Vatnajokull loses an average of 100 to 300 m (328 to 984 ft) in length annually.
Alarmingly, there are no signs of a slowdown in the rate of melting, as global temperatures continue to go up.
Not surprisingly, global sea levels are rising as a consequence of the melting ice caps.
Besides a decrease in sea ice and an increase in permafrost thawing, it's predicted that long-term effects of climate change will witness an increase in heat waves and heavy precipitation, and decreased water resources in semi-arid regions. The outlook is grim.
But can the melting of ice sheets and glaciers at the poles be halted? Some scientists believe so.
Global warming could be reversed by refreezing the poles—yes, refreezing the North and South Poles—according to research published in the journal Environmental Research Communications.
The ambitious idea is feasible, scientists insist. But how exactly do you refreeze the poles?
The idea is to reduce incoming sunlight on the polar regions. From the South Pole, the sun is always above the horizon in the summer and below the horizon in the winter. This means the region experiences up to 24 hours of sunlight in the summer and 24 hours of darkness in the winter.
Similarly, the North Pole stays in full sunlight all day long throughout the entire summer. It is in total darkness for months in the winter.
The Earth is bombarded by solar radiation. This is the energy emitted by the Sun through electromagnetic waves. While the polar regions are the areas that get the least amount of solar radiation, scientists nevertheless believe that by further reducing sunlight over the North and South Poles, the refreezing of both territories can occur. But how do you reduce incoming sunlight?
It would involve a possible future geoengineering program whereby high-flying jets would spray microscopic aerosol particles into the atmosphere.
These aerosols would be delivered by military air-to-air refueling tankers.
The planes would need to fly at a height of 13,106 m (43,000 ft)—the stratosphere—on a seasonal basis, servicing both hemispheres during the long days of local spring and summer.
The aerosols would be released at latitudes of 60 degrees north and south—roughly Anchorage and the southern tip of Patagonia.
At those latitudes, these stratospheric aerosol injections would slowly drift poleward, slightly shading the surface beneath and helping to block out sunlight.
The research team estimates the cost of such a radical intervention would be around US$11 billion annually. A lot of money, yes, but this is less than one-third the cost of cooling the entire planet by the same 2°C (35°F) magnitude, and just a tiny fraction of the cost of reaching net zero emissions.
Stratospheric aerosol injection is not the only pole-cooling method being considered. Indonesian architect Faris Rajak Kotahatuhaha won an award for his project Refreeze the Arctic, which consists of collecting water from melted glaciers, desalinating it, and refreezing it to create large hexagonal ice blocks.
The process would begin with a submarine plunging beneath the surface to fill its hexagonal-shaped central cavity with seawater, explained CNN.
Salt would then be filtered out and a hatch closed over the chamber to shield the liquid cargo. An iceberg would then form naturally inside, before being ejected a month later. Its hexagonal shape would allow it to interlock with similarly designed icebergs to form larger frozen masses.
Another proposal being considered is a technique known as marine cloud brightening. This would involve the injection of particles—the salt in seawater, perhaps—injected into clouds to increase the amount of sunlight they reflect, the premise being brighter clouds reducing sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface, thus diminishing summer melting and encouraging the replenishment of ice during the winter.
Scientists are also working on a concept for a wind-powered pump that sucks up seawater and sprays it out onto the ice's surface, where it will freeze faster.
And in Alaska, the US non-profit group Ice911 tested a theory using "hollow microspheres." This entailed scattering particles of silicate glass over a portion of a frozen lake in Alaska. Researchers found that ice treated this way was thicker and more reflective than untreated ice.
Meanwhile back at the poles, the logical next step would be to combat greenhouse gases by developing a process that could dim starlight, thereby cooling the whole planet, said the US team.
All parties involved in these enterprising but high-risk schemes admit, however, that while representing potential game-changers in a rapidly warming world, they are not substitutes for decarbonization.
Sources: (New Scientist) (NASA) (National Snow and Ice Data Center) (The World Counts) (Environmental Research Communications) (CNN) (Newsweek) (United States Geological Survey)
Could global warming be reversed by refreezing the polar regions?
The radical ideas for refreezing Earth's poles
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Did you know that a staggering 680 billion tonnes (750 billion tons) of ice is melting every year due to climate change and global warming? The sea ice around Antarctica alone shrank to the smallest area ever recorded in early 2022. And it's in the polar regions that scientists are looking to develop one of the most radical methods ever devised to reverse global warming: the refreezing of the North and South Poles!
It sounds like a crazy idea straight out of science fiction, but researchers believe the concept is feasible and have even published a white paper outlining the methodology such a project would entail. So, how exactly do you refreeze the poles?