'Artificial snow' could save ice sheet

LONDON - Governments could stop the West Antarctic Ice Sheet from sliding into the ocean and submerging coastal cities by launching a last-ditch engineering project to blanket its surface with "artificial snow", according to a German study released on Wednesday.

Scientists believe that global warming has already caused so much melting at the South Pole that the giant ice sheet is now on course to disintegrate, which would trigger an eventual global sea level rise of at least three meters over centuries.

The authors of the new study envisaged using 12,000 wind turbines to pump seawater 1,500 meters up to the surface, where it would be frozen into "snow" to try to weigh the sheet down enough to stop it collapsing any further.