First experiment to thicken Arctic ice with seawater shows promise — but there’s a big catch

A simple method to thicken Arctic sea ice has shown promising results in its very first field experiment, performed in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada.

Researchers are considering several controversial geoengineering techniques to slow the catastrophic melt of Arctic sea ice, including stratospheric aerosol injection, which involves shooting tiny sulfur particles into the sky to blot out the sun. But in a new study, scientists evaluated the merits of a much safer and more straightforward approach: pumping seawater onto existing sea ice in winter and letting it freeze into a reinforcing layer.

Known as sea ice thickening, this method has been used by Nordic and Arctic communities for decades, and ice hockey rinks employ a similar technique to keep their ice sturdy, two of the study's authors told Live Science in an email.