Scientists plan to build undersea wall in Antarctica to stop sea level rise

A huge project to build an undersea ‘wall’ in Antarctica could offer a last-ditch way to stop sea level rises, scientists have suggested.

The idea is that a huge wall (or a series of ‘lumps’ on the sea floor) could stop warm water undercutting ice sheets – while humans address the underlying problem of climate change.

A new study suggests that it the ‘geoengineering’ idea could actually work, according to a new study published in The Cryosphere.

‘Doing geoengineering means often considering the unthinkable,’ says John Moore, a scientist at Beijing Normal University, China.

Some glaciers, such as the Britain- or Florida-sized Thwaites ice stream in West Antarctica, are retreating fast.

‘Thwaites could easily trigger a runaway ice sheet collapse that would ultimately raise global sea level by about 3 metres,’ explains Michael Wolovick , a researcher at Princeton University’s Department of Geosciences.

READ MORE FROM YAHOO NEWS UK:

Woman, 86, has heart attack after ‘callous’ thieves steal her purse in post office
Skydiver’s chilling final post just hours before tragic fatal plane crash
Apple’s new ‘toughest ever’ £1,449 iPhone smashes very easily when dropped
Debate rages over woman who ‘reserved’ parking spot by standing in it for 10 minutes
Labour ‘not ruling out Remain option’ in second referendum, says Starmer

This could have dramatic effects to the millions of people living in the world’s coastal areas.

The team looked into two designs: one is to build a wall underwater to block warm water reaching an ice shelf’s base, which is very sensitive to melting.

Another was to build mounds or columns on the sea floor to support the glacier, helping it to regrow.

‘In either case, we were imagining very simple structures, simply piles of sand or gravel on the ocean floor,’says Wolovick.

The team ran computer models where they applied these designs to Thwaites Glacier in a warming world.

The research shows that even the simpler design could slow down the rate of sea-level rise, giving more time to coastal societies to adapt to rising waters.

The smallest intervention has a 30% probability of preventing a runaway collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet for the foreseeable future, according to the models.

Wolovick says, ‘We all understand that we have an urgent professional obligation to determine how much sea level rise society should expect, and how fast that sea level rise is likely to come.

‘However, we would argue that there is also an obligation to try to come up with ways that society could protect itself against a rapid ice-sheet collapse.’

This intervention would consist of building isolated 300-metre-high mounds or columns on the seafloor using between up to 0.35 cubic milers of aggregate, depending on the strength of the material.

This is similar to the amount of material that was excavated to build the Suez Canal in Egypt or used in Dubai’s Palm Islands.