Daily Dot: Scientists are Working to Refreeze the Arctic

Dear Reader,

Across the Arctic, sea ice is melting. Summer ice has shrunk by about 40% in the last 45 years. That has triggered one of the climate system’s most dangerous vicious cycles. An article in The Guardian explains that “Ice reflects 70% of the sun’s heat back into space, while open ocean reflects just 7%. The more that melting exposes the sea, the warmer it gets, and the more melting there is. Summer sea ice could be gone as early as the 2030s, and scientists worry that the heat boost could push the climate beyond catastrophic and irreversible tipping points.” Which is why the work of a group of scientists to try and refreeze the Arctic is so urgent.

It’s part of a geoengineering experiment undertaken by a UK organization called Real Ice. The story tells us that “the team … braved temperatures of -40C on the sea ice to drill holes and pump 50,000 tonnes of ocean water up onto its surface. It froze almost immediately, thickening the 1.5-metre-deep ice by about 50cm, according to the new measurements. That has protected the ice, at the start of the melt season at least, and is an early sign that one day, perhaps, it may be possible to refreeze a significant part of the Arctic.”

(Geoengineering can be controversial, as Bluedot editorial director Leslie Garrett tells us in this story.)

Last year, the experiment added about a foot of ice, and this year’s extra thickness is almost a foot and a half. It mightn’t seem like much, researchers say, but a foot of ice can add 7-10 days to the lifespan of the ice. And there’s been a pleasant surprise in that the ice created by the team reflects the sun’s heat even better than the surrounding natural ice.

Plenty of eyes are on the Arctic, hoping that this refreezing works and can then be scaled. Cold and important work for today’s Climate Champs.

Read the whole fascinating story here.

Frigidly,

Dot