Geoengineering of glaciers: solution to stop glaciers from melting?

A group of glaciologists insist on the fact Geoengineering could resolve the problem in term of glaciers retreat.

"We think that geoengineering of glaciers on a similar scale could delay much of Greenland and Antarctica’s grounded ice from reaching the sea for centuries"

Even if most of the people consider these projects as "non-achievable", new solutions have been found (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

If we build a wall

Figure 2

(a) and (b) on Figure 2 represents how warm water affects glacier and the melting rate without any wall.

(c) and (d) in Figure 2 shows how an artificial sill or wall can prohibit warm water to reach the glacier. Also, we see that the ice flow is reduced.

Freeze the water beneath glaciers: another solution

"Fast-sliding ice streams supply 90% of ice entering the sea"

Then freeze the water beneath the glacier would reduce ice sliding (see Figure 1 - Proposal A).

Everything is feasible

More fieldwork and computer modelling need to be done. Glaciers need to be further analysed in term of their rate of melting or ice flow, and geomorphology.

Figure 3 shows how recent studies revealed how fast fast Antarctica glaciers melt.

Figure 3

A Geoengineering project of this level is largely feasible:

"The easiest design that we considered would be comparable to the largest civil engineering projects that humanity has ever attempted"

However we would need to work out with the harsh environment, and ecosystems lying near the glaciers may be affected.

It is worth though to give it a try better than doing nothing!

A temporary solution

A postdoctoral student from the University of Princeton argued that using Geoengineering to resolve the glacier melting problem would be a short term solution.

It would either

"be a stopgap solution meant to preserve the ice sheets until the climate cools enough that they are once again viable on their own"

or

"be a managed collapse meant to keep the rate of sea-level rise down while slowly letting the ice sheet waste away"

Glacier Geoengineering would then be a local and temporary solution. We need first to manage, at a bigger scale, how to reduce our Co2 emission.