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With the globe struggling to contain the catastrophic effects of climate change, one of the most vulnerable areas is now the Arctic. The Arctic’s future appears increasingly dismal due to record-low sea ice levels and the worrying retreat of glaciers like Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier. But there is some hope now that scientists have found novel ways to refreeze the Arctic ice, which could turn around this environmental disaster.
Pumping Seawater: A Novel Approach to Ice Thickening
In the Canadian Arctic, one of the most promising approaches is to inject seawater atop the current snow cover. The goal of this method, created by the UK startup Real Ice, is to add a fresh layer of ice to the underside of the current ice sheets. In preliminary testing, researchers have successfully generated 25 cm of natural ice by digging through the ice to the ocean below and pumping water onto the snow.
“Our objective is to demonstrate that ice thickening can be effective in preserving and restoring Arctic sea ice,” explained Andrea Ceccolini, co-CEO of Real Ice. The company collaborated with the Centre for Climate Repair at the University of Cambridge to conduct these field trials earlier this year.
Refreezing Arctic Ice: A Race Against Time
These experiments show encouraging findings, but time is of the essence, according to the experts. The amount of Arctic sea ice has decreased to 1.65 million square miles, which is roughly 750,000 square miles less than the end-of-summer average from 1981 to 2010. By the 2030s, scientists believe that the area may have entirely clear summertime ice.
“Today, the overwhelming majority of ice in the Arctic Ocean is thinner, first-year ice, which is less able to survive the warmer months. There is far, far less ice that is three years or older now,” warned Nathan Kurtz, lab chief of NASA’s Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory.
The race is on to discover practical ways to refreeze the ice and save this delicate ecosystem as the world sees the Arctic change before our very eyes. Although these experiments give promise, they are really a stopgap solution. In the end, maintaining a sustainable future for the Arctic and the globe at large depends on lowering global CO2 emissions.
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