Arctic Climate Engineering

The likely insufficiency of conventional climate mitigation policies to prevent dangerous climate change has prompted increasing interest in technological interventions to cool the planet. Most of the scholarly and policy literature on climate engineering has focused on interventions aimed at influencing the global climate—for example, by injecting reflective particles (aerosols) into the stratosphere, which would reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the surface of the Earth. Our focus here is on a less-studied area: potential Arctic-specific interventions to thicken sea ice, reduce ice melt, or stabilize glaciers, which we argue raise fewer legal and governance issues than global interventions.