Nice thinking, good to see some positive suggestions.
I understand what you’re saying and there is a considered logic to it. On a small scale and in a controlled environment your proposal would indeed have a positive effect.
Unfortunately the Arctic is large-scale and uncontrolled so, whilst a well thought out plan, it wouldn’t offer a practical solution.
In the last 30 years there has been an overall annual decline in the extent of the Arctic sea-ice of about 2,500,000km2 or about 350km2 per day. Most of the mixing of sea-water occurs in the top 100 metres so what you’d need to do is to warm up some 35km3 of sea-water per day, 35 gigatonnes / 35 billion tonnes.
To cause a 1°C change in the temperature of this volume of water at close to freezing point would require the equivalent of adding (or removing) 100 petajoules (100,000 million million) of heat energy thus the scale of the operation would be phenomenal.
Another way to look at it… because freshwater is already entering the Arctic area the salinity of sea-water in this part of the world is lower than elsewhere at about 3.2PSU (practical salinity units). By mass, this means you’ve got to remove a billion tonnes of salt from the sea-water every day.
Then of course there’s the problem of eddies, gyres, currents etc. Your desalinated water would quickly be transported elsewhere and in time it would exit the Arctic region through ‘gateways’ and end up in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
Water in the Arctic region is constantly being flushed out, warm water enters the Arctic to the east of Iceland via the northern end of the North Atlantic Current and cold water enters through the Bering Straits. After circulating round for a while it exits to both the east and west of Greenland and through the straits around the Canadian islands.
An inadvertent consequence could be disruption to the global system of ocean currents, collectively these are known as the Thermohaline Circulation and as the name suggests, they’re driven by the temperature (thermo) and salinity (haline) of the water.
The introduction of cold and fresh water from the melting of the Greenlandic ice is already giving rise for concern. The impacts of this melting the Gulf Stream aren’t yet understood, there may be no impact or it could cause the current to diverge, truncate, overturn, split or stall; the consequences of which could be a massive climatic shift for northwestern Europe, Greenland and to a lesser extent the eastern US seaboard.
Perhaps this idea isn’t the one that’s going to reverse the melt of Arctic ice – not because the idea won’t work but because of the scale and inherent impracticalities. However, keep thinking along these lines and you never know what you’ll come up with next.
Arctic temperatures in summer are around 0 C
The definition of Arctic you are using is misleading, it includes part of Norway etc.
Why not have a vacation at the North Pole this Summer, after all it's 24 hours daylight and at 0 degrees you should be ok with a few jumpers and a basic tent, let me know how you get on.
Hi Ben, spot on with the talking fantasy. The panels would be destroyed in the extreme weather conditions. Are we sure that this effort is needed? I saw the polar bear balancing on the last bit of ice in the north pole, and Santa needs somewhere to live but did you consider that someone may have been fibbing about these problems. If it ain't broke don't fix it.
the ocean is pretty big, there is no way short of billions of plants would even make a dent in the salt content. You can make some calculations based on energy requirement of current de-sal plants.
Ice extent is at or near record levels.
Where did you get the silly notion that the ice caps are melting?
Back to the drawing board
Yeah it is possible but certainly not feasible and not necessary. I think it is a solution looking for a problem.
Salt water freezes at much lower temperatures than fresh water. Arctic temperatures in summer are around 0 C. Much higher than the freezing temperature of salt water. Hence the polar ice caps are melting.
Would it be possible to use arctic desalination plants to reduce the salt content of large amounts of sea water thus allowing it to freeze and slow the rate at which the polar ice is melting?
Of course, such an endeavour would require enormous amounts of power. However, during the summer months, the arctic has 24 hour long days which could possibly provide adequately sized solar farms with enough sunlight to provide renewable energy to power these desalination plants. Admittedly, I would imagine you'd need a hell of a lot of pv panels, but what else have we got up there? Not a lot. Just a load of ice and space.
When summer ends, so does the daylight, but then the temperatures fall too to the point where salt water freezes, negating the requirement until the following summer.
Am I talking fantasy or could there be anything to this?
