No idea. It would need to be modelled. As I said, it could actually make things worse. For the record, we were originally thinking about making pockets of clathrate and not a dam of the stuff as this would not impact the flow dynamics of the glacier significantly.
From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Lockley Sent: 06 August 2018 10:45 To: David Sevier Cc: Peter Eisenberger; geoengineering; Carbon Dioxide Removal Subject: Re: [geo] Stopping the Flood: Could We Use Targeted Geoengineering to Mitigate Sea Level Rise? Making glaciers stick to the bedrock would, at first glance, seem to be a great way to rebuild ice caps/sheets. If flow from eg PIG could be blocked/slowed, that would have a significant effect on the ice above. A potentially risk is of catastrophic failure - if a CO2 based glacier suddenly snaps off, will it rebind - or will it just dump the whole ice sheet into the ocean? A On Mon, 6 Aug 2018, 10:39 David Sevier, <david.sev...@carbon-cycle.co.uk> wrote: It might be possible to change the flow dynamics of glaciers forming carbon dioxide clathrates at the bottom of the glacier by carbon dioxide injection under specific conditions. Carbon dioxide clathrates melt at 80C which is above the temperature of the glacial melt water. The clathrates require energy input to reverse back to water and carbon dioxide. Klaus and I looked at storing CO2 in glaciers a number of years ago. We were thinking about capturing CO2 from the air and sticking it in the glaciers. Storing CO2 in glaciers could be a very large CO2 store if done correctly and in the right place. I talked to number of glacier experts at the time who made the connection that done right, the formed clathrates which are heavier than ice would migrate to the bottom of the glacier and act to stick the glacier to the bedrock. They mused that this would change the flow dynamics of the glacier but as we did not do further work on storing CO2 in glaciers, no one looked at this properly. It would probably work to hold back the glacier and could be used to store quite a lot of CO2 but only for time frames below 10,000 years (this said, some ices of the Eastern Antarctica Glacier are over 1 million years old). I would point out that without proper modelling, this is speculation at best. An individual glacier system would have to be modelled to get a more realistic idea if this would work or not. It is possible that sticking the bottom of the glacier to the bed rock could have unforeseen and worse impacts than doing nothing. David Sevier Carbon Cycle Limited 248 Sutton Common Road Sutton, Surrey SM3 9PW England Tel 44 (0)208 288 0128 Fax 44 (0)208-288 0129 www.carbon-cycle.co.uk This email is private and confidential -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
