Serdar Dincel
09 September 2025•Update: 09 September 2025
ISTANBUL
While ambitious ideas like refreezing Arctic ice and installing massive underwater sea curtains are gaining traction as the planet warms, none of the most high-profile proposals are feasible and may even cause lasting damage, warned a new study released on Tuesday.
The polar ice sheets, critical to sea level stability, are melting rapidly, spurring growing interest and investment in “polar geoengineering” projects aimed at artificially cooling the Arctic and Antarctic.
Proponents of geoengineering argue that the climate crisis demands exploring such solutions, but the writers of the report, which was published in the journal Frontiers in Science, warn that they are a dangerous distraction.
"These ideas are often well-intentioned, but they're flawed," said Martin Siegert, a glaciologist at the University of Exeter and the lead author of the study.
"As a community, climate scientists and engineers are doing all we can to reduce the harms of the climate crisis -- but deploying any of these five polar projects is likely to work against the polar regions and planet,” said Siegert.
Siegert and an international team of scientists evaluated five prominent polar geoengineering proposals.
These included pumping seawater onto ice or spreading reflective glass beads to thicken sea ice, installing massive seabed curtains to block warm water from ice shelves, spraying sun-reflecting particles into the stratosphere, draining water from beneath glaciers to slow ice flow, and adding nutrients like iron to polar oceans to boost carbon-absorbing plankton.
After examining each idea’s effectiveness, feasibility, risks, costs, governance, and scalability, the researchers concluded that none are viable and all could pose serious environmental dangers.
Siegert noted that the Arctic and Antarctic are some of the harshest environments on Earth, and these proposals, many of which exceed anything humans have attempted before, fail to account for these extreme conditions.
The report states that none of these methods have been thoroughly tested at scale, with sea curtains having no real-world trials, and concludes that all five proposals carry a risk of “intrinsic environmental damage.”
Sea curtains could harm marine life, subglacial water removal could pollute pristine areas, stratospheric particles might alter global climate, and spreading glass beads on the ocean is especially risky, the study highlighted.
