If we send ocean waters into glacier of north pole/south pole to reduce sea level, will it help global warming?

Question

this is my first time posting in Earth Science, please be gentle to me.

I am Science Enthusiast, though numbers are my enemies for now so I can't come up with formulas or any form of calculations. However, I do understand some of the facts and some laws became my common sense, that leads to this question.

With our current technology, I believe we have the power to make devices that sends water into glaciers or ice. In my opinion, those water will become ice, rebuilding cracks of glaciers (if any?), and reducing sea level at the same time.

My question is, is this a good idea? will it helps global warming/climate change? or will it worsen the situation?

I also thought of creating artificial rain via artificial clouds but I don't think it is a good idea.

PS.

I don't know much of this stuff, but I'm kinda desperate since Australia (and other countries) might be uninhabitable completely within this century.

Answer 1

The problem faced by so many geo-engineering approaches is that the scale of the problem is so great. We are losing approximately 300 cubic kilometers of ice just in the Artic each year (trends in Artic ice volume).

300 cubic kilometres of ice is 3 x 10$^{11}$ metric tons of water. Lets imagine a series of pumps that are placed at the North pole and raise sea water from under the ice. We will raise the water 10 metres to spread it over the ice. It takes 100 Mega Joules to raise a metric ton of water that height. So we need 3 x 10$^{13}$ Mega Joules of energy to raise enough water to compensate for global warming induced ice loss.

Allowing for pump efficiencies etc. we would need about 1.5 x 10$^{13}$ Kilowatt Hours of electricity. This is 1.5 x 10$^{10}$ Megawatt Hours. Current global annual electricity generation is about 2 x 10$^{10}$ Megawatt Hours! So we would need to more or less double our current global energy production to address just a part of the problem, and this ignores both the engineering practicalities and the issues of whether pumped sea water would actually freeze and 'restore' the polar ice.

And of course adding to sea ice wouldn't affect sea level rise - so actually pumping would have to be to much greater heights and use much more energy to build ice caps on land.