Global warming does not affect everyone the same way. Without going any further, Europe is the continent that most is warming according to the World Meteorological Organizationbut there is another place where the heat has turned the turbo: the Arctic. The North Pole heats up four times faster than the global average. Additionally, sea ice is at historic lows since records began 125 years ago.
Faced with this climate emergency, a research team has come up with something so logical that it is surprising for its apparent simplicity: is there a lack of ice? Well, we manufacture more artificially. So they have left the laboratory and gone to the field to see if it is possible.
The idea. The company Real Ice, in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, drills into sea ice in the dead of winter and pumps seawater onto its frozen surface. The water, when exposed to that extreme cold, freezes immediately and adds an extra layer of ice. Now that they have the base mechanism, Real Ice is adapting pumps used on skating rinks or oil platforms to power them with renewable energy.
According to The GuardianIn a recent test, the team pumped 50,000 tons of water onto 1.5-meter-thick ice at -40ºC and managed to increase its thickness by 0.50 meters.
Why is it important. Although emissions reduction is the only long-term sustainable solution, while it arrives it is necessary to explore techniques to save time because the Arctic melting is a problem with chain consequences that affect different scales:
- At the local level it poses a threat to Inuit ways of life and fauna such as the polar bear or the walrus, in addition to destabilizing the ecosystem.
- At a global level, it can alter weather patterns. Sea ice is a kind of planetary air conditioner: its white surface reflects solar radiation, something that the dark ocean does not do (albedo feedback). That extra warming of the Arctic is also related to a wavier, slower jet stream which can lengthen and promote heat waves or floods. Furthermore, the thaw goes hand in hand with the thaw of the permafrostwhich releases methane and further accelerates warming.
Context. This project is part of the program RASI (Re-thickening Arctic Sea Ice), a public – private initiative in which the University of Cambridge and two private companies, Real Ice and Arctic Reflections, carry out research that combines rigorous scientific models with real experimentation in the Arctic. As a curiosity, it is not the only proposal: there are others more controversial that propose dispersing sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere to reflect sunlight.
In detail. The first study in the last 2024/2025 campaign has confirmed that the test areas ended the winter up to 32 centimeters thicker than the control areas. According to the study, this difference is similar to what the Arctic has lost in the last 50 years. Furthermore, at the end of the winter campaign they observed that this new ice remained whiter and brighter during the melting season, so it seemed to melt more slowly, improving the albedo.
Yes, but. On paper it looks very good, but the scientific community has its doubts. An analysis of several of these proposals published in the journal Frontiers in Science concluded that they did not successfully overcome the criteria of feasibility, cost, governance and environmental risk. The underlying criticism is that it could give the false sensation that there is a technical shortcut that relaxes the pressure to reduce emissions. On the other hand, a test in a specific area is one thing and the price of scaling this technique to the entire Arctic is another.
Cover | Annie Spratt and Jan Antonin Kolar
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