Scientists have developed an insane plan that uses 10 million wind-powered pumps to “refreeze” the Arctic.
Researchers at Arizona State University have proposed the 10-year, $500 billion project as a potential solution to the Arctic’s rapidly melting ice cap. The paper was recently published in the journal Earth’s Future.
Currently, the Arctic ice cap is barely 6 to 9 feet thick (2-3 meters) and measured its lowest ever level during summer 2016. The ice is melting too quickly during the summer for the winter temperatures to replenish it.
This is bad for two big reasons: Ice reflects 90 percent of sunlight, while the ocean absorbs 90 percent of sunlight — the less Arctic ice we have, the more heat our planet absorbs. Secondly, Arctic permafrost releases methane when it melts. This, like CO2, results in an increase in the greenhouse effect.
“Our only strategy at present seems to be to tell people to stop burning fossil fuels,” Dr. Steven Desch, the project’s lead researcher, told The Guardian.
The $50 billion-a-year project would install pumps across 10 percent of the Arctic. These devices would use hoses and wind power to pump sea water to the surface, creating another layer of ice that would help thicken the ice cap. The pumps could conceivably add another three feet (or one meter) of ice.
Covering the entire 3.8 million miles of the Arctic would require 100 million pumps, but the researchers believe 10 percent of the surface would be effective enough to begin with.
Steel buoys would support the pumps, and their construction would require roughly 10 million tons of steel a year. World production of steel is 1.6 trillion tons annually, while US production is around 80 million tons.
Science has been desperate for a solution to slow the Arctic ice decline, since the world’s fastest-warming region is on track to lose most of its summer sea ice in the coming decades. The study reports that the late-summer Arctic could be iceless as early as the 2030s.
“The scale of climate change and associated problems is so large it paralyzes us into inaction,” Desch told ASU.edu in December. “But we can make real progress in the Arctic by putting people to work and using just a fraction of the industrial capacity that accidentally caused climate change in the first place.”
In 2012, a Harvard physicist proposed injecting reflective particles into the atmosphere to help reflect solar radiation. Another proposal suggests creating artificial clouds around the region that could block heat from getting to the surface at all — something NASA is about to test.