The Guardian: Meet the scientists trying to refreeze the Arctic

The Guardian's Damian Carrington joined the ice thickening team in Cambridge Bay to discover more about the project, its place in the community, and some early results.

Led by Real Ice, the team has been pumping seawater onto existing ice to see if it can be preserved for longer. With the Arctic warming faster than anywhere else, the research hopes to understand if and how the melting and loss of vital sea ice can be slowed.

Our director Shaun Fitzgerald was there with the team. "It is amazing to be part of this research project," he said. "The value of field experiments cannot be overstated. We are learning so much."

"The observations of pumping in deep winter, and melting in early summer, are teaching us incredible things – things you can’t easily predict from modelling or laboratory scale experiments. These phenomena will be reported as we write up the results."

As the article notes, local communities have been involved from the beginning. "The people of Cambridge Bay have been incredibly welcoming – the guidance and support we have received is truly wonderful. And although initial results are encouraging, we still have a lot of work to do to fully understand the physics, the environmental aspects (both positive and any negative ones), and the scalability."

Read more in The Guardian and let us know what you think. Thanks to all team members including the Cambridge Bay Hunters & Trappers Organisation, Real Ice, University of Washington, and to Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) for funding the research.