Restoring the Arctic Ice: an Assessment of Techniques and Call for Action

Abstract:

The Arctic sea ice has been retreating in a process of albedo positive feedback. This has caused accelerated heating which has raised temperatures locally faster than globally, in what has been called “Arctic Amplification” (AA). It can be argued that AA causes weather extremes events, because the reduced temperature gradient between poles and tropics reduces energy in the Rossby waves, causing them to meander further to north and south and allowing them to get stuck in blocking patterns for longer periods. Observations strongly support the argument that AA is more influential in causing extreme weather events than global heating. One only needs to look at the rates of change. The rate of global temperature change, currently around 0.25°C per decade, has doubled over the past 40-50 years corresponding to a doubling of CO2eq. The rate of Arctic temperature change increased about 8-fold over a similar period, largely due to albedo positive feedback, and is now at around 1.0°C per decade with a huge increase in extreme weather events over that period.

With the scientific community at large focussed on reducing CO2 emissions, the demand for cooling technology to address the Arctic situation has been largely ignored. There has been pitifully little research and practically no development of the type of technology which is needed to reverse the trends in the Arctic: trends which could lead to catastrophic consequences, including ever worse extreme weather events. Indeed the little research which has been done has been focussed on potential dangers of cooling technology rather than the potentially huge benefits, including the reduction of extreme weather events. Candidate cloud manipulation methods will be assessed, together with stratospheric aerosol injection and surface albedo enhancement.

There has been even less research on physical techniques, such as sea ice thickening and sea ice barriers, to help retain land and sea ice with their attendant albedo. These techniques will also be assessed, for use in conjunction with cooling techniques.