Race Against Time: Geoengineers Propose Underwater Curtains to Slow Melting of Doomsday Glacier

Geoengineers are planning to test massive underwater curtains that could slow catastrophic glacial melting. The Thwaites, a.k.a. "doomsday glacier," has lost over 1,000 billion tons of ice since 2000. If the Thwaites collapsed entirely, global sea levels would ultimately rise by about 10 feet.

According to Business Insider, “Cities like New York, Miami, and New Orleans would experience devastating flooding. Across the globe, 97 million people would be in the path of rapidly encroaching waters, putting their homes, communities, and livelihoods at risk.”

According to the UN, approximately 40 percent of the world’s population lives on the coastline and is directly threatened if global sea levels rise. The Thwaites glacier is located in West Antarctica and flows into Pine Island Bay, part of the Amundsen Sea.  is the world’s widest and roughly the size of Florida.

The massive glacier is 75 miles wide and plays a crucial role; it blocks warming sea waters from reaching other glaciers. At the same time, the glacier itself is under threat of collapse as warm waters lap at its ice wall, melting it away.

According to the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), “Climate change is happening faster and in a dramatically more visible way in the Earth’s cryosphere: the snow and ice-dominated regions around both the North and South Poles, and in high mountains.”

However, according to the ICCI, while the ice and ground permafrost are melting, the danger is not in those barren regions, but right where we live. “The most catastrophic and wide-ranging impact of our disintegrating cryosphere is on the entire Earth: sea-level rise from melting glaciers and ice sheets; loss of snowpack for water needs; polar seas and fisheries whose cold waters acidify faster, with damage to polar shell-building animals already today; carbon releases from permafrost the size of a top-20 greenhouse gas emitter, plus shrinking sea ice in the Arctic at all times of year: both impacts that are warming the planet faster and further.”

Satellite imagery has shown that warming ocean currents and winds have caused the collapse of a section known as the sea ice tongue. According to a CNN report, the glacier plays a vital role in the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, acting like a cork holding back the vast stretch of ice behind it. Thwaites’ collapse would undermine the ice sheet's stability, which holds enough water to raise sea levels by at least 10 feet, causing catastrophic global flooding.

According to experts, the melting glacier contributes four percent to the global sea rise level. This sounds minimal but it is actually a massive amount. Since the year 2000, it has lost over 1,000 billion tons of ice.

Experts and geoengineers have been working to find solutions to this massive problem and have come up with a unique solution: underwater curtains.

Glaciologist and geoengineer researcher John Moore wants to spend $50 billion to install massive 62-mile-long underwater curtains to help prevent the warm seawater from reaching the glacier. While the idea is still undergoing testing, there are few if any other ideas about how to save the glacier from melting and flooding the globe. What is clear is that if we want to prevent nearly 100 million people from being affected by coastal flooding, scientists, activists, and governments will need to come up with a plan – and quickly.