Exploring a radical intervention

[Roosters for ever]

Could closing a sea passage between Russia and the US stabilize the Atlantic current? Exploring a radical intervention

A dam in the Bering Strait could potentially help stabilize the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), according to research by Ph.D. candidate Jelle Soons from Utrecht University. Using climate models, he investigated how closing the strait between Alaska and Siberia would affect...

sciencex.com

Could closing a sea passage between Russia and the US stabilize the Atlantic current? Exploring a radical intervention:​

A dam in the Bering Strait could potentially help stabilize the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), according to research by Ph.D. candidate Jelle Soons from Utrecht University. Using climate models, he investigated how closing the strait between Alaska and Siberia would affect the current.

In some scenarios, the AMOC remains more stable, although uncertainties are large and it is unclear whether such an intervention would work in practice. The study was published in Science Advances.

In the 1960s, Soviet engineer Petr Mikhailovich Borisov came up with a plan to melt Arctic sea ice. According to him, this would be beneficial: larger parts of Russia could be used for agriculture and settlement. It would also make the Sahara greener and create a milder global climate.

He proposed that building a dam in the Bering Strait could influence the exchange between cold Arctic water and warmer water from the Pacific Ocean. This, in turn, would allow warmer water to flow toward the Arctic, causing much of the sea ice to disappear.

Large scale ocean current​

Soons wondered whether a dam in the Bering Strait could help prevent the AMOC, a large ocean circulation system, from slowing down or collapsing.

Earlier research suggests that this circulation was stronger during the Pliocene, between 5 and 2 million years ago. At that time, sea levels were lower and the Bering Strait was closed, meaning North America and Asia were still connected. This raised a question: what would happen if that connection were closed again today?

more at link....

 

[Roosters for ever]

Not sure about anyone else, but I reckon that idea is crazy!!
It may at one time eons ago, had been connected, but such interference today after eons of evolution, is again CRAZY!

 

[C C]

Yah, geoengineering in general is dangerous (coin flip territory even at its most optimistic depiction). But I guess this is kind of interesting from a "what if" science fiction perspective and the speculative politics of whether such a massive-scale collaboration between Russia and the West would also either forge or require a new détente.
_

 

[TheVat]

If the dam were solid enough for a road, it could open up (assuming that détente) a new tourism experience, driving the long way around from London to NYC, say. (Though a small cheat passing through the Chunnel, where one cannot drive oneself but must put car on a train bed from Folkestone to Calais) But as CC points out, geoE is risky. And some of our unintended geoE is not going so well.

 

[Ken Fabian]

Even the Author doesn't appear to endorse actually doing it. It does seems more thought experiment than any kind of realistic option - one that to me shows the significance of aggressive decarbonising as our best one.

 

[exchemist]

It seems the depth of the Bering Strait is similar to that of the English Channel/La Manche at its narrowest point (~50m), so the engineering challenge is perhaps not totally ridiculous, though still enormous in scale. But I really don't think anyone would claim we are confident enough about the effects to embark on such a vast undertaking, even if the geopolitics could be managed, which is highly doubtful.