How do you stop a glacier from melting? Put up an underwater curtain.

This story was initially revealed by the Guardian and is reproduced right here as a part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Scientists are engaged on an uncommon plan to forestall Antarctic glaciers from melting. They need to construct a set of big underwater curtains in entrance of ice sheets to guard them from being eroded by heat sea water.

Ice in polar areas is now disappearing at record rates as international warming intensifies, and pressing motion is required to decelerate this loss, the worldwide group of ­scientists has warned.

Their proposed resolution is the development of a 62-mile-long (100 km) curtain that will be moored to the mattress of the Amundsen Sea. It might rise by about 656 ft (200 meters) from the ocean ground and would partially prohibit the influx of comparatively heat water that laps on the bases of coastal Antarctic glaciers and undermines them.

The Seabed Curtain mission, if applied, can be one of many largest geo-engineering programmes ever undertaken. “It might be an enormous mission — however then we face a big downside,” glaciologist John Moore of Lapland College instructed the Observer final week.

“The melting of glaciers in Antarctica would may set off catastrophic flooding across the planet and lead to a whole bunch of tens of millions of individuals dropping their houses. That can be extremely dangerous for civilization as we all know it, so we have to do one thing.”

The curtain proposed by Moore — who’s working with scientists on the College of Cambridge and different ­facilities within the US — would stretch alongside the seabed reverse the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers. These act as plugs that stop the large ice sheets behind them from sliding into the ocean.

Scientists warn that the lack of the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers may very well be sufficient to lift sea ranges around the world by three meters in the event that they melted, a prospect now thought of to be an actual menace as international warming takes a grip of the area and causes sea temperatures to rise.

“Glaciers are affected by hotter air which melts their surfaces however they’re additionally eroded at their bases by heat seawater,” stated Shaun Fitzgerald, director of the middle for local weather restore on the College of Cambridge, one of many companions within the scheme. And because the oceans heat because the planet heats up as a result of local weather change, the extra intense is the erosion of ice on the bases of those glaciers.”

Constructing a curtain that restricts the move of heat water on to the Antarctic coast may gradual the undermining of those glaciers and so cut back the chance of their catastrophic disappearance, say the scientists. They envisage constructing a collection of seabed curtains and are set to start analysis to pinpoint the perfect supplies for his or her development.

“We aren’t going to do that with a single sheet of material, and we aren’t taking a look at good, sealing membrane,” added Fitzgerald.

One thought can be to make use of air as a barrier for safeguarding glaciers. A pipe – with holes drilled alongside it – can be laid down alongside the seabed and air pumped by means of it. The curtain of air bubbles that will rise from it’d then be capable of maintain again the ingress of heat seawater.

“We don’t know if that may work since we’re solely at a really early stage in our work,” added Fitzgerald.

“We have to examine how salinity impacts water move and perform all types of laptop simulations and the testing of mathematical fashions. Then we can be prepared for the primary bodily assessments.”

These assessments are scheduled to be carried out on the River Cam later this 12 months, when varied fashions can be examined underwater.

“After that we are going to start to work on an even bigger scale,” added Moore. “We would go to a fjord in Norway to construct a prototype, for instance.

“Definitely this isn’t going to be one thing that can be accomplished in a hurry. It is going to take a few years. On the opposite hand, we do want to start out planning now.”