Antarctic Iceberg Collection for Clean Water Supply

With the growth of the global population, the acceleration of industrialization, and the intensification of global climate change, water scarcity has become a global problem. According to the United Nations, about 2 billion people in the world lacked access to clean drinking water and basic domestic water in 2022. At the same time, millions of people, most of them children, die each year from diseases related to inadequate water supply and sanitation due to economic downturn or outdated infrastructure. Water scarcity, poor water quality and inadequate sanitation also have a negative impact on food security, livelihood choices and educational opportunities for poor families around the world. 

At the same time, the world's wetlands are disappearing at an alarming rate, with 85% of them disappearing over the past 300 years. Water levels in lakes, rivers and reservoirs on land have also experienced dramatic fluctuations above natural levels over the past five years. Agricultural wastewater and untreated industrial wastewater discharge excess nutrients into rivers, lakes and aquifers, disrupting the functioning of water systems and posing the most serious threat to global environmental water quality. In North Africa and West Asia, water stress has reached a critical level of 84.1%, and in East Asia, North America and Southern Europe, water stress has reached an intermediate level.

In order to achieve the goal of clean drinking water and domestic water for all, at the beginning of the 21st century, the 193 member states of the United Nations included "clean water" in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as one of the highest priority goals. Based on available data, the United Nations recently proposed that the effectiveness of existing efforts must be increased by more than four times in order to meet the 2030 targets for drinking water, environmental water and hygiene. To this end, it is necessary to accelerate the sustainable supply of water resources, optimize global water management, and promote cooperation among countries in transboundary waters and the use of freshwater resources from polar glaciers, while striving to increase investment in water resources and sanitation.

Antarctica is home to more than 90% of the Earth's surface freshwater resources, of which glaciers are the main form of existence. The total amount of glacial material in Antarctica is huge, about 27 million cubic kilometers. According to research statistics, more than 100,000 icebergs in Antarctica melt into the ocean every year, and their area ranges from less than 1 square kilometer to 10,000 square kilometers. From 2016 to 2020, more than 150 large Antarctic glacier break-ups occurred each year. In 2017, the total area of icebergs in Antarctica was 9,260 square kilometers, and the total mass of icebergs was about 1,832.6 billion tons, which is about 40% of global freshwater consumption in 2020 (4,000 billion tons in 2020). As a freshwater resource, Antarctic icebergs are huge in number and renewable, and they are freshwater resources with great potential that have not been developed in the world.

Since Antarctica is located at the southernmost point of the earth, far away from human living areas, and the natural environment is extremely special, it is a great challenge to use the water resources of Antarctic icebergs to provide clean drinking water for mankind, and it is necessary to make full use of the latest technology in every link to promote the success of the project.

In the attempt, satellite remote sensing technology and deep learning software are used to automatically monitor the Antarctic glacier fracture process and icebergs, the volume and mass of icebergs are measured by unmanned aerial vehicles, the ocean currents, iceberg collisions, water resistance, and drag speed around icebergs are predicted through mathematical models, and the calorific changes and freshwater balance in the process of iceberg movement are calculated by using sensors. In addition, a special process is used to treat and process the water of the harvested Antarctic icebergs to meet the standards of human drinking while maintaining the beneficial components of the Antarctic ice water.