Stopping Unstoppable Sea Level Rise by Team_ISI
Please find below the
Semi-Finalist Evaluation
Judges'' comments
A very well put together proposal. However, based on past lessons especially those coming out from Japan, much more research is needed before going into this venture on-ground. The technical feasibility should be critically evaluated by experts.
Specific comments:
•Will the temperature differential between the injected water and the sub-glacial water be so great that the colder water will simply sink? Or will the two water temperatures blend to reach an interim temperature cooler than the original? We don’t see how the cold water can “push” out all the warm water from beneath the glacier.
•The authors say that “very accurate” measurements of sliding rate can be taken, but then say the finest scale will be km/year – this seems too coarse, considering the baseline rate is 4 km/year…
•It needs to be clarified what the relationship is between the melting/sliding caused by warm sub-glacial waters, and the depositional and gravitational forces coming from “upstream/inland” that are (presumably, based on our understanding of glaciers) also pushing the glaciers into the sea. How do these two factors work together to result in the “sliding rate” which the project seeks to reduce?
•This scale of project needs a much more detailed explanation of how x will affect y, including calculations. Perhaps that would be a reasonable first phase for funding: further develop the theoretical model before planning to ever pilot test the setup.
Overall, this proposal represents an ambitious feat of geoengineering and novel one at that. However, it's not clear that enough work has been done to demonstrate feasibility. Infrastructure issues aside, maintaining temperatures beneath ice shelves sufficient to offset ambient ocean temperatures would seem to necessitate massive volumes of water and that demand would increase as ocean temperatures warm. This seems like an interesting hypothesis to test via a modeling strategy before one attempts to deploy in the real world.
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