Hope to halt climate change by thickening Arctic sea ice
The government is to spend £10 million on investigating whether climate change could be slowed by refreezing the Arctic.
Scientists at the University of Cambridge will explore whether the Arctic’s rapidly diminishing sea ice could be artificially thickened, with field trials set to begin in Canada this year.
The money will come from the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria), a government body that has been given £800 million of taxpayers’ money to invest over the next four years to explore ideas deemed to be on the “edge of the possible”.
Aria plans to give £5.5 million to scientists at the universities of Cambridge and Harvard and Imperial College London to explore a contentious strategy known as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). The goal would be to dim the sun by introducing aerosol particles high into the stratosphere. Modelling suggests the approach could offer a relatively cheap way to cool the Earth, but the science remains largely theoretical and there is a risk of catastrophic side-effects.
The idea may sound outlandish but another geo-engineering approach, carbon capture and storage, was also once seen as a fringe idea. It is now a pillar of government policy.
The SAI research will involve launching specially-adapted weather balloons from sites in the USA or the UK. They will carry the samples of natural dust, such as powdered limestone, into the stratosphere for exposure periods ranging from hours to weeks.
The dust will then be brought back to Earth and analysed. “Studying the recovered samples will reveal how stratospheric conditions affect their properties over time. This foundational science is essential to advance understanding of the potential impacts of SAI and for determining if less harmful alternatives to sulphates might exist,” Aria said in a statement.
Other grants include £2 million in funding to look at whether zapping clouds with electric charges could make them brighter. This could potentially make the Earth cooler by bouncing away more of the sun’s energy.
Researchers at the University of Manchester will receive £6.1 million to develop technology for marine cloud brightening, which involves spraying seawater into the air to increase the reflectivity of low-lying clouds.
The Arctic ice-thickening project will involve Cambridge and Manchester universities, UCL, the University of Washington and Arizona State University. “The Arctic is warming much faster than the global average, leading to dangerous sea ice loss with far-reaching consequences,” Aria said.
The team will study whether pumping seawater onto the surface in winter — where it can freeze and thicken existing ice — could reduce summer melt and slow regional warming. Because ice is more reflective than open water, it could mean that less solar energy is absorbed by the planet.
The plan is for small-scale experiments in Canada across three winter seasons. If early experiments suggest the approach is ecologically sound, later experiments will aim to cover areas up to 1 km² per experiment site.
“The key questions are whether this thicker ice lasts longer into the summer, how it might affect ice movement, and what the local ecological impacts are,” Aria added.
Dominic Cummings is believed to have come up with Aria while he was Boris Johnson’s chief adviser
JEFF OVERS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Widely seen as the brainchild of Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s chief adviser during his time as prime minister, Aria is modelled in part on the American Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Darpa is often credited with dreaming up the internet, but its output has also included armed drones, driverless cars and a sheme to control the minds of Vietnamese villagers through mass hypnosis.
Opinions are divided on whether geo-engineering is a responsible use of public funds. Professor Mike Hulme of Cambridge said: “£57 million is a huge amount of taxpayers’ money to spend on speculative technologies intended to manipulate the Earth’s climate.” The side-effects will remain unknown until they are deployed for real, he added. Research work risked pushing the UK down “the slippery slope” towards large-scale deployment of solar geo-engineering, he said.
However, Professor Stuart Haszeldine of the University of Edinburgh, argued that radical ideas must be explored. “We can no longer rely on intuition or superstition to manage the climate. Controlled experiments are essential to see whether modelling holds up – and to understand who benefits or loses. Ignoring the problem isn’t a solution to a crisis of our own making.”
Aria’s biggest climate bets
Marine cloud brightening: £7 million to investigate whether spraying sea salt into the atmosphere could make low-lying clouds whiter, deflecting solar radiation.
Planetary sunshade: £400,000 to explore whether a giant reflector be built in space to deflect some of the sun’s energy.
Stratospheric aerosol injection: £6 million to investigate a highly controversial idea that could ultimately involve releasing millions of tonnes of sulphur each year high above the Equator to dim the sun. An estimate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has suggested it could cool the planet by roughly 1.5C at a cost of no more than $10 billion a year.
Cirrus modification: £5 million to explore whether high-altitude cirrus clouds, which have an overall warming effect on the climate, could they be made thinner to cool the planet.
Re-thickening Arctic sea ice: £10 millionto develop a process that would involve pumping seawater from beneath existing ice and spreading it on top, where the frigid air would freeze it quickly, creating thicker ice patches.