Is artificial snow sure of rising sea levels?

Little Mohamed Western

German scientists have proposed an innovative way to slow sea-level rise and save millions of people living on coasts threatened by drowning using artificial ice.

Turning West Antarctica into an industrial complex for snow production could be a possible solution to prevent many areas of the world from sinking, including big cities such as New York, Shanghai, Amsterdam and Miami, the scientists said in a new scientific study. However, this solution is not a substitute for efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Enormous project
The solution is to use an estimated 12,000 high-performance wind generators to produce the 145 gigawatts of energy needed to raise Antarctica's ocean water to an average altitude of 640 meters, for heating, desalination and spraying over an area of ​​more than 52,000 square kilometers of ice sheet. In the frozen west of the continent in the form of artificial snow, an average of hundreds of millions of tons each year and for decades.

According to scientists, such a measure could slow or stop the inevitable collapse of the ice sheet, which if fully melted would lead to a rise in sea level and the world's oceans by 3.3 meters.

"It's about global capitals, from New York to Shanghai, which in the long run will be below sea level if no effort is made," says Anders Leverman of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the study. "It is accelerating and melting ice may not stop until the Antarctic ice sheet disappears."

It may not be enough
But the authors of the study, published in Science Advances in July, do not see their simulations of Western Antarctic ice loss and measures to stop the loss as an alternative. Their calculations will be valid only with a significant reduction in global CO2 emissions that drive global heating and sea level rise.

In other words, the world will need to give up fossil fuels, agree to switch to renewable energy, and then use that renewable energy to save the world's major cities from advanced waves later, although that will have a price: the destruction of Antarctica's unique ecosystem.

An indicator of the predicament we are experiencing
The researchers admit that the proposed solution is difficult to achieve since it will be implemented under difficult conditions of the Antarctic climate. But the mere fact that they can write such a proposal is in itself an indication of the accelerating gravity of the plight of our planet today, as environmental observers say.

The most important steps to be taken to curb global warming, which 195 countries ratified at the Paris conference in 2015, have yet to be implemented. According to current trends, with increasing carbon dioxide emissions, decreasing ice caps at the poles and rising ocean temperatures, the world will see an average temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius in 2100.

While the idea of ​​artificial snow is impractical for some, in order to prevent an unprecedented threat, mankind may have to work harder, Ferman says.