Thwaites Glacier, located in the West Antarctic Ice Shelf, is shown in this photo.

(NASA)

At a Glance

A new study suggests pumping more than 7 trillion tons of artificial snow onto the ice could stop melting.The undertaking "means an unprecedented effort.""I don't want it to be done, but I'm not sure there's another way," one of the researchers said.

A group of European scientists is suggesting that pumping a massive amount of snow – some 7 trillion tons – onto an Antarctic ice shelf could help stave off the effects of global warming.

The idea was proposed in a in the journal Science Advances. This strategy would involve pumping water from the ocean, possibly desalinating it, freezing it into snow and then, over a 10-year period, shooting more than 7 trillion tons of it out of cannons, similar to the way that ski resorts distribute artificial snow, onto the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

To get an idea of the scale of such an undertaking, consider that an average car weighs about 1 ton.

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The target location for all that snow would be the ice sheet around the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers, an area about the size of Costa Rica.

Exactly how to accomplish this astronomical feat isn't clear. The study doesn't go into the technical aspects other than to say it would need at least 12,000 wind turbines to provide power, and suggests it would take "an unprecedented effort for humankind in one of the harshest environments of the planet."

And besides the logistics, there's another downside: The equipment potentially needed to run the operation would forever change one of the most remote places on Earth.

"The effort you have to put into it, it's huge. It's like a moon station or something," Anders Levermann, one of the study authors and a professor at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told weather.com. "It’s a truly untouched place. With this project, one would turn it into an industrial compound.

"I’m not sure I want it to be done, but it is, quite frankly, one possible option to save New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Calcutta. Otherwise, we will have a hard time defending (against climate change)."

On the plus side, using vast amounts of ocean water to create all that snow would actually lower sea levels worldwide by a few centimeters, Levermann said.

He admits the idea is bizarre. But he said the extreme threat from climate change may call for extreme measures.

"What I think is good is if this study emphasizes how huge the problem, the interference is, that we have already caused over the climate system," Levermann said. "If people take this study and say, 'Well this problem’s really big,' then that’s a good thing.”

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Levermann is a highly respected expert on sea level change and was a lead author on part of last year's annual report for the United Nations' .

Under current conditions, he said, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been destabilized and will eventually melt, causing sea levels to rise nearly 10 feet. That, in turn, could devastate many of the world's most important cities.

"That is something that we cannot protect New York or Hamburg against with the current techniques," Levermann said.

He added that people in major cities might end up living behind huge walls, with the sea rising above them.

"That’s not my scenario, it’s just physics," he said.

Levermann also pointed out that he is looking beyond the next few years of climate change.

"What I know is that people focus on this century’s sea level rise, which is fair enough. These (cities) have been living longer than just 100 years or 80 years ... and those are the places where we build our culture," Levermann said.

"I actually really don’t know if we should rather give up New York or Hong Kong or destroy Western Antarctica."