PARIS, March 16 — A Dutch startup has come up with a plan for using seawater to help reinforce ice caps and slow down the melting caused by global warming. This idea may be far from miraculous, but it nevertheless has the merit of proposing a potential solution to one of the most critical climate emergencies.

Like many of its Nordic neighbours, the Netherlands is famous for its outdoor skating rinks.

There’s even a traditional method for creating them, originating in the country’s villages, which involves pumping water onto fields every night during the winter.

The aim is to form several layers of ice to make the surface sufficiently resistant to accommodate skaters.

It’s this age-old technique that Dutch company Arctic Reflections has decided to draw inspiration from.

But here, the aim is not to create skating rinks on the prairies, but to delay the melting of sea ice by pumping seawater onto ice in winter in strategic locations in the Arctic Sea.

"The Arctic seawater, when pumped over the ice, freezes quickly due to the low Arctic atmosphere temperature. This results in thicker ice sheets, which are less likely to melt completely during summer,” the startup’s website explains.

But that’s not all: by creating these extra layers of ice, the Dutch company hopes to enhance the ice’s "albedo effect", ie, the reflection of the sun’s rays back into the atmosphere.

Moreover, the idea is for the ice thickened at certain locations to be distributed naturally throughout Arctic waters by naturally occurring ocean currents.

This is directly inspired by the "sand motor” technique, another Dutch invention involving the natural distribution of supplementary sand at coastlines to protect them from erosion.

To carry out its experiments, Arctic Reflection joined forces with a team of scientists from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Difficult to deploy on a large scale

Known as "Arctic Ice Management” (AIM), the process looks promising, but raises a number of questions and challenges.

Starting with the quantity of ice involved, as well as the energy expenditure required to carry out such a project.

"Considering the AIM model, it is discouraged to implement AIM on ice thicknesses below 0.6 metre and suggested for ice thicknesses approaching 1 metre or higher to optimise the effective increase.

The required water volume to compensate the annual sea ice volume loss highly depends on the location, initial ice thickness and target ice thickness and varies between 707 to 1,095 cubic km in the Beaufort Sea and between 386 to 464 cubic km in the Transpolar Drift for the methods discussed in this research.

To pump up this water volume, the expected power requirements are 4.5 to 7.0 GW and 2.5 to 3.0 GW respectively,” reads a paper outlining the technique by Laura van Dijke, a researcher at Deft University of Technology who was involved in the project.

"I see a potential for this on a smaller scale, for example, if you want to strengthen natural habitats for polar bears and seals, where the sea ice in summer could survive a bit longer if we target specific fjords or bays,” Hayo Hendrikse, assistant professor at Delft University of Technology who has worked with Arctic Reflections, told The Guardian.

The Dutch company is far from being the first to think of a solution to counter the melting of Arctic ice. In 2016, a team of American researchers, led by physicist Steven Desch, deployed millions of wind-powered pumps over the Arctic ice cap, with the aim of turning water into ice and thus reforming the sea ice.

For its part, Canadian company Real Ice is aiming to restore sea ice inland, using pumping machines powered by renewable energies.

In its annual report, published in April 2023, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) highlighted the alarming acceleration in glacier melt and record temperatures in 2022.

The organisation warned that glacier melt and sea-level rise "will continue to up to thousands of years.” — ETX Studio