A ‘Doomsday Glacier’ that could flood New York and Miami is melting – experts have a radical plan to stop it

Scientists have proposed radical plan to stop a massive Antarctic glacier from melting that would cause catastrophic flooding along the US East Coast.

They suggested installing a giant underwater curtain, artificially thickening glaciers with seawater or cooling the bedrock they slide over to mitigate warm waters from reaching the Thwaites Glacier, also known as the ‘Doomsday Glacier.’

The Thwaites Glacier is melting at an increasing rate due to climate change and would raise global sea levels by 10 feet, flooding coastal cities like New York, Charleston, Atlantic City and Miami. 

To avoid this, researchers led by the Climate Systems Engineering Initiative at the University of Chicago published a report calling for a ‘major initiative’ in the next decades to research which, if any, interventions could and should be used.

Douglas MacAyeal, a professor of geophysical sciences co-author of the white paper, said: ‘Our argument is that we should start funding this research now, so that we aren’t making panicked decisions down the road when the water is already lapping at our ankles.’ 

One proposal in the new report would pump seawater onto the surface of the Doomsday Glacier, where cold air temperatures would cause it to freeze in place and thus thicken the glacier.

But the idea comes with risks and costs, the authors warned. 

The salinity of the seawater might damage the structural integrity of the ice, and the energy needed to pump large volumes of seawater poses unsolved problems. 

A UK startup called Real Ice is has been working on this solution since 2019. Field trials conducted earlier this year in Canada showed promising results, but deploying it at scale would cost roughly $6 billion per year and require enormous energy input.

This and other interventions discussed in the report are examples of geoengineering solutions. They intentionally alter the planetary environment in order to counteract the affects of human-driven climate change. 

Some experts have called the ideas ‘radical,’ saying geoengineering ‘would be difficult or impossible to achieve and draw focus away from the more necessary conversation of reducing carbon emissions.’

Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at the Columbia Climate School, said: ‘When we talk about glacial geoengineering, we need to tell the truth, which is that it’s not a solution to climate change – at best, it’s a painkiller.’

The Doomsday Glacier spans 74,000 square miles and is losing about 50 billion tons of ice each year, which accounts for roughly four percent of global sea level rise. 

It also acts as a natural dam that prevents the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) – which covers 760,000 square miles – from collapsing.

This ‘vigorous melting’ is largely driven by warm tidal currents that pump beneath the glacier, according to a May study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The white paper, published in July, included results of recent conferences at the University of Chicago and Stanford University on geoengineering.

Another proposed intervention would be to stop warm currents from impacting the glacier would be to erect a giant underwater ‘curtain’ in front of it. 

This idea was designed and proposed by glaciologist John Moore of Lapland University, who co-authored the white paper.

The curtain would stretch 62 miles long and could cost up to $50 billion to build.

It would anchor to the bottom of the Amundsen Sea, blocking warm undersea currents from hitting the underside of Thwaites Glacier.

Held up by a buoyant top edge and anchored at the bottom, the curtain would float at the bottom of the ocean, invisible from the water’s surface.

Pulling this off would require a feat of engineering and construction, not to mention a massive financial investment. 

It also comes with risks. The white paper points out that blocking heat from the sub-ice cavities could have effects all along the Amundsen Sea Coast.

‘For example, if the circulation of warm circumpolar deep water shifts west, it could affect other ice shelves, potentially reducing their stability, while changing local ecology in uncertain ways,’ the report reads.  

But Moore is moving ahead with his plan. He previously told DailyMail.com that he and his colleagues were working on computer simulations to get the design right, as well as ‘some small scale tank tests, basically with fish tanks.’ 

Other experts believe they can reduce glacial melting by cooling the bedrock that glaciers slowly slide over.

Glaciers are constantly moving toward the sea, and as they do so, their bottom surfaces scrape over the underlying bedrock, generating friction and thus heat that causes them to melt from below.

Michael Wolovick, a glaciologist at Princeton University, thinks that he could slow this melting by drilling tunnels into the bedrock and pumping cold water through them.

This would combat the heat generated by glacial movement and thus reduce melting at the bottom of the glacier.

This idea would cost tens of billions of dollars, and the potential risks involved – especially to local ecosystems – require further investigation. 

As researchers sound the alarm on the Doomsday Glacier’s rapidly accelerating melt rate, more scientists are urging support for geoengineering projects.

‘It will take 15 to 30 years for us to understand enough to recommend or rule out any of these interventions,’ Moore said in a statement.

The white paper came on the heels of the May PNAS study, which used high-resolution satellite images and hydrological data to identify areas where warm tidal currents are flowing under the Doomsday Glacier and causing it to melt faster. 

This accelerated melt rate could mean that global sea level rise predictions need to be reassessed, as catastrophic levels arrive sooner than experts previously thought, the researchers concluded. 

The loss of the Doomsday Glacier would also lead to the collapse of the WAIS – the continental ice sheet that covers West Antarctica. 

The WAIS is essentially a bowl of ice three times the size of Texas sitting in a basin that’s below-sea-level in Western Antarctica.  

The Thwaites Glacier is one of a line of glaciers sitting along the marine-facing rim of the WAIS. 

These glaciers are the only thing blocking the ocean from filling the WAIS basin and melting or dislodging its ice. 

If both the Thwaites and the WAIS collapsed, it would cause irreversible, extreme sea level rise that would endanger millions of people and accelerate melting of other glaciers around the world. 

Climate scientists classify this potential disaster as a ‘tipping point,’ or the crossing of a critical threshold that leads to major, unstoppable changes in the climate system. 

‘We were hoping it would take a hundred, 500 years to lose that ice. A big concern right now is if it happens much faster than that,’ Christine Dow, study co-author and associate professor of glaciology at the University of Waterloo, told Scientific American.