The world’s largest cooling project?

New research suggests that refreezing the Earth’s poles by reducing incoming sunlight would be a feasible and cheap approach to addressing melting ice and rising sea levels.

In what might be the world’s largest cooling effort, scientists proposed spraying microscopic aerosol particles into the atmosphere above the poles via high-flying jets.

According to new research published in IOP Publishing’s Environmental Research Communications, the aerosols would target latitudes of 60 degrees north and south – around Anchorage, Alaska, in the north and the southern tip of Patagonia in the south.  

From a height of 13,000m, the particles would slowly drift poleward, slightly shading the surface beneath.

Using a fleet of approximately 125 tankers would cost an estimated $11 billion and could potentially cool the poles by 2°C per year, returning them to their pre-industrial average temperatures.

“Game-changing though this could be in a rapidly warming world, stratospheric aerosol injections merely treat a symptom of climate change but not the underlying disease,” says lead research author Wake Smith, “It’s aspirin, not penicillin. It’s not a substitute for decarbonisation.”

Researchers acknowledge that the study is a preliminary step towards understanding the costs, benefits, and risks of climate intervention.

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