September 9, 2025

Polar geoengineering – an assessment of several concepts

Geoengineering has been discussed as a way of cooling the planet if we don’t reduce emissions fast enough.  The polar regions are warming more rapidly than the rest of the planet, risking catastrophic ice loss and sea level rise.  Several concepts for polar geoengineering have been proposed, including stratospheric aerosol injection to reflect sunlight, building ‘sea curtains’ to protect ice from warming water, and deliberate thickening of sea ice.  How do the proposals stack up?

A new review published in Frontiers in Science examines five such concepts and gauges them on technological availability, feasibility, cost, adverse consequences, environmental damage, scalability, governance and ethics. The authors conclude that none of these geoengineering ideas passes scrutiny and that they must not distract us from urgent rapid decarbonisation. 

Journalists came to this news briefing to hear from the authors discuss their assessment and put their questions to them.

Speakers included:

Prof Martin Siegert, Professor of Geosciences at the University of Exeter

Prof Steven Chown, Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future, Monash University, Melbourne

Dr Sammie Buzzard, Assistant Professor at Northumbria University

Dr Heidi Sevestre, glaciologist and deputy secretary at AMAP Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme.

Dr Valerie Masson-Delmotte, senior scientist and head of the Climate Society Center at Institut Pierre Simon Laplace / Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (CEA-CNRS-UVSQ), Université Paris Saclay, France 

This Briefing was accompanied by an SMC Roundup of Comments.