Skip to main content

Site Banner Ads

Site Search

Search

Home Up Here Publishing

Mobile Toggle

Social Links

Facebook Instagram

Search Toggle

Search

Main navigation

  • Magazines
    • Latest Issue
    • Past Issues
    • Up Here Business
    • Visitor Guides
    • Move Up Here
  • Sections
    • People & Places
    • Arts & Lifestyle
    • History & Culture
    • Travel & Tourism
    • Nature & Science
    • Northern Jobs
  • Newsletter
  • Community Map
  • Merch
  • Visitor Guides
  • Our Team
  • Subscribe/Renew

Brains On Ice

December 2018

How space hoses and glacier snuggies could keep the Earth cool

By Elaine Anselmi

Illo by Beth Covvey

Illustration by Beth Covvey

Breadcrumb

  1. Home
  2. Brains On Ice

When it comes to fighting global warming, scientists are feeling the heat. From giant glacier sweaters to hoses hanging out in the stratosphere, here are a few of the mammoth engineering schemes they’ve drawn up to try to keep us cold.

The winds of ice

Towering wind turbines mounted on sea ice will save the
polar ice cap. Or so say researchers at the University of Arizona. They propose installing wind-powered pumps across the Arctic’s thinning ice that will bring water to the surface to quickly freeze in the sub-zero air. They hope this will thicken ice sheets in the winter and give them a better shot at staying frozen through the longer and warmer summers.

Put some snow on it

How do you keep a glacier from baking in the sun? No, Utrecht University researcher Hans Oerlemens and his team aren’t smothering a small glacier at the base of Diavolezzafirn (a mountain in southeast Switzerland) in sunscreen. But blowing artificial snow over it might be the next best thing. The idea is that adding a layer of snow during the summer months will veil the melting glacier in white and reflect more sunlight away from it. If this idea works, the scientists will move on to the country’s largest glacier, Morterasch.

Head in the clouds

Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates wants to blast seawater at low-sitting clouds to whiten them so they reflect more light away from the Earth. Similarly, scientists from the University of Edinburgh are talking about building platforms on the Arctic Ocean with tall towers that will pump and spray seawater into the air, forming new clouds to reflect sunlight away from the warming ocean.

Space hoses

A 20-kilometre-long hose dangles in the sky from a 200-metre-wide helium balloon. From the ground, hundreds of tonnes of chemical particles are pumped through the hose and into the stratosphere to bounce sunrays away from the earth. This project has been repeatedly delayed, but the British scientists behind the idea aren’t done tinkering with their hoses just yet.

Glacier snuggies

For a good decade, Swiss scientists have been shrouding their shrinking glaciers in fleece blankets to coddle them during the sunny, summery months. Why coddle a glacier? Well, this pampering, conceived by Utrecht University scientists, is an attempt to prevent the sun’s rays from reaching the ice. And so far, it has
successfully slowed glacial melt.

 

December 2018

A Weakened Jet Stream

How the Arctic figures in southern fires and floods

By Elaine Anselmi

PHOTO BY UP HERE

October 8th, 2025 October 8th, 2025

December 2018

The cast of “Two Hands and Forever” was made up of people from all facets of life.

A brief shining moment

It could’ve been a classic. So why did a high-flying NWT musical miss its chance?

By Tim Edwards

Photo Courtesy Alex Czarnecki

October 8th, 2025 October 8th, 2025

Related Articles

UP HERE - JUL/AUG 2025

Photo by Page Burt

Just Wait and See

Much of what nature has to offer in the North is easy to spot. But take your time–there’s a payoff for your patience

October 8th, 2025 October 8th, 2025

UP HERE - JUL/AUG 2025

-----

Safe or Sorry: Up to You

11 rules for surviving your wilderness adventure

October 8th, 2025 October 8th, 2025

UP HERE - JUL/AUG 2025

-----

Big, Bad Bruins?

How I learned to stop worrying and love—or at least not fear—the bear encounter

October 8th, 2025 October 8th, 2025

Tear Sheet

Photos by Alex Hall

Wolf Watching on the Tundra

Few wilderness creatures arouse more controversy and curiosity than wolves do

October 8th, 2025 October 8th, 2025

UP HERE - MAY/JUN 2025

Photos by Page Burt

In Cold Bloom...

See Arctic adaptation in six plants, from poppies to prickly saxifrage

October 8th, 2025 October 8th, 2025

UP HERE - MAR/APR 2025

Photo by Haley Ritchie

Nature... and Nurture

How a popular northern hot spring caters to visitors from near and far—and bears, moose and snails  

October 8th, 2025 October 8th, 2025
Newsletter sign-up promo image.

Stay in Touch.

Our weekly newsletter brings all the best circumpolar stories right to your inbox.

Up Here magazine cover

Subscribe Now

Our magazine showcases award-winning writing and spectacular northern photos.

Subscribe

Footer Navigation

  • Advertise With Us
  • Write for Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimers & Legal

Contact Information

Up Here Publishing
P.O Box 1343
Yellowknife, NT
X1A 2N9  Canada
Email: info@uphere.ca

Social Links

Facebook Instagram
Funded by the Government of Canada