Modeling and assessing impact of artificially enhancing the Arctic Sea
Ice Albedo
Abstract
Summer ice in the Arctic is diminishing at an alarming rate. Increase in
radiative forcing due to the loss of sea ice is contributing to global
warming. Artificially enhancing the sea ice albedo could be a possible
lever to restoring and rebuilding the Arctic sea ice. Using reflective
hollow glass spheres with low environmental impact, Field et al (2018)
reported that such a technology could be promising towards restoring
Arctic Sea Ice. Here we present the preliminary climate modeling and
impact assessment of such a technology both regionally and globally. We
seek to answer the scientific question of whether an enhanced sea ice
albedo over the whole of Arctic sea ice provides a large enough
perturbation to the climate in the Arctic and if so what is its likely
impact over the rest of the globe. The study shows that the climate
impact of such a method results in more than 1.5°C cooler temperatures
over a large part of the Arctic and about 3°C reduction over regions
north of Barents and Kara Seas. We also see notable increases in sea ice
thickness (20–50 cm Arctic wide) and (>15–20%) increases
in sea ice concentration across large parts of the central Arctic. These
preliminary results suggest that such a technology may be a viable
instrument for restoring Arctic ice. However, practicality dictates that
a localized targeted deployment of the technology may be more desirable.
We are extending this work to evaluate targeted deployment of materials
in key areas and will present the climate modeling results on efficiency
of targeted deployment for at least one such targeted area. Reference:
Field, L., Ivanova, D., Bhattacharyya, S., Mlaker, V., Sholtz, A.,
Decca, R., et al.(2018). Increasing Arctic sea ice albedo using
localized reversible geoengineering. Earth’s Future, 6.
https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EF000820