Glaciers usually transfer so slowly you possibly can’t see their progress with the bare eye. (Their tempo is … glacial.) However these large our bodies of ice do march downhill, with doubtlessly planet-altering penalties.  

There’s rather a lot we don’t perceive about how glaciers transfer and the way quickly a number of the most vital ones may collapse into the ocean. That could possibly be an issue, since melting glaciers may result in a number of toes of sea-level rise this century, doubtlessly displacing tens of millions of people that reside and work alongside the coasts.

A brand new group is aiming not solely to additional our understanding of glaciers but in addition to look into choices to avoid wasting them if issues transfer towards a worst-case situation, as my colleague James Temple outlined in his newest story. One concept: refreezing glaciers in place.

The entire thing can sound like science fiction. However when you contemplate how large the stakes are, I feel it will get simpler to know why some scientists say we should always no less than be exploring these radical interventions.

It’s arduous to really feel very optimistic about glaciers lately. (The Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is commonly referred to as the “doomsday glacier”—not alarming in any respect!)

Take two research revealed simply within the final month, for instance. The British Antarctic Survey launched essentially the most detailed map to this point of Antarctica’s bedrock—the muse beneath the continent’s ice. With twice as many information factors as earlier than, the examine revealed that extra ice than we thought is resting on bedrock that’s already beneath sea degree. Which means seawater can circulation in and assist soften ice quicker, so Antarctica’s ice is extra weak than beforehand estimated.

One other examine examined subglacial rivers—streams that circulation beneath the ice, usually from subglacial lakes. The crew discovered that the fastest-moving glaciers have a complete lot of water shifting round beneath them, which speeds melting and lubricates the ice sheet so it slides quicker, in flip melting much more ice.

And people are simply two of the latest surveys. Take a look at any information website and it’s in all probability delivered the identical gnarly message in some unspecified time in the future lately: The glaciers are melting quicker than beforehand realized. (Our website has one, too: “Greenland’s ice sheet is much less secure than we thought,” from 2016.) 

The brand new group is becoming a member of the race to raised perceive glaciers. Arête Glacier Initiative, a nonprofit analysis group based by scientists at MIT and Dartmouth, has already awarded its first grants to researchers wanting into how glaciers soften and plans to check the opportunity of reversing these fortunes, as James completely reported final week.

Brent Minchew, one of many group’s cofounders and an affiliate professor of geophysics at MIT, was drawn to learning glaciers due to their potential affect on sea-level rise. “However through the years, I grew to become much less content material with merely telling a extra dramatic story about how issues had been going—and extra open to asking the query of what can we do about it,” he says.

Minchew is among the many researchers wanting into potential plans to change the way forward for glaciers. Methods being proposed by teams world wide embody constructing bodily helps to prop them up and putting in large curtains to gradual the circulation of heat water that speeds melting. One other method, which would be the focus of Arête, is named basal intervention. It principally includes drilling holes in glaciers, which might permit water flowing beneath the ice to be pumped out and refrozen, hopefully slowing them down.

You probably have questions on how all this might work, you’re not alone. These are nearly inconceivably large engineering tasks, they’d be costly, they usually’d face authorized and moral questions. No one actually owns Antarctica, and it’s ruled by an enormous treaty—how may we probably determine whether or not to maneuver ahead with these tasks?

Then there’s the query of the potential negative effects. Simply have a look at current information from the Arctic Ice Undertaking, which was researching methods to gradual the melting of sea ice by overlaying it with substances designed to replicate daylight away. (Sea ice is completely different from glaciers, however a number of the key points are the identical.) 

One of many undertaking’s largest subject experiments concerned spreading tiny silica beads, type of like sand, over 45,000 sq. toes of ice in Alaska. However after new analysis revealed that the supplies is likely to be disrupting meals chains, the group introduced that it’s concluding its analysis and winding down operations.

Reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases to cease local weather change on the supply would definitely be extra simple than spreading beads on ice, or making an attempt to cease a 74,000-square-mile glacier in its tracks. 

However we’re not doing so scorching on chopping emissions—actually, ranges of carbon dioxide within the environment rose quicker than ever in 2024. And even when the world stopped polluting the environment with planet-warming gases at this time, issues could have already gone too far to avoid wasting a number of the most weak glaciers. 

The longer I cowl local weather change and face the scenario we’re in, the extra I perceive the impulse to no less than contemplate each possibility on the market, even when it appears like science fiction. 

This text is from The Spark, MIT Know-how Assessment’s weekly local weather publication. To obtain it in your inbox each Wednesday, enroll right here.