Could geoengineering ‘ice arches’ help preserve Arctic sea ice? — SkimNews
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- Arctic Reflections, a Dutch startup, received a £9.9 million UK government grant and is testing whether pumping seawater onto ice in the Nares Strait would reinforce 'ice arches' keeping Arctic sea ice from draining south into the Atlantic.
- Nares Strait ice arches between Greenland and Ellesmere Island failed to form in three of the past two decades, allowing an estimated 95,000 square kilometers of ice to drain and melt annually.
- A 2024 Svalbard field trial by Arctic Reflections thickened sea ice from 90 to 116 centimeters using pumps designed for ice roads, though researchers note it's unclear whether the artificially thickened ice survives summer melt.
- Kent Moore at the University of Toronto, who has authored more than a dozen Nares Strait studies, argues the bulk of ice loss occurs in years when arches never form at all — meaning 'there's nothing to thicken.'
- Mark Serreze at the University of Colorado Boulder called the approach a 'band-aid' and said research energy would be 'much better put toward alternative energy sources.'
- Geoffrey Evatt at the University of Manchester, an Arctic Reflections advisor, argues the project is still worth pursuing because the 'last ice area' directly north of the strait serves as a climate refugium for polar bears, seals, and walruses.
- The concept traces to Malcolm Davidson of the European Space Agency, who observed Nares Strait ice arches during a 2011 satellite-validation flight; his collaborator Marc Cornelissen died in April 2015 after falling through unseasonably thin ice while planning related fieldwork.
Why it matters: If Arctic Reflections proves the thickening approach in upcoming Nares Strait field trials, it would preserve tens of thousands of square kilometers of Arctic sea ice and postpone the summertime ice-free Arctic projected as soon as the 2030s. But Moore and Serreze counter that the worst ice loss occurs in years when arches never form — undermining the intervention's premise before it scales.
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