Could Freezing Arctic Sea Ice Combat Climate Change?

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

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Summary

The year-round sea ice in the Arctic is melting and has shrunk by nearly 40 percent over the past four decades. Geoengineering companies such as Real Ice are betting big on refreezing it. That may sound ridiculous, impractical or risky—but proponents say we have to try. The U.K. government seems to agree, investing millions into experimental approaches such as Real Ice’s. Pulitzer Center Ocean Reporting Fellow Alec Luhn is taking us with him to the Arctic to see what it takes to freeze sea ice in the already freezing cold. Recommended reading: Read Luhn’s feature in the June 2025 issue of SciAm, which will be released on May 20: https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/alec-luhn/ Follow Luhn on Instagram @alecluhn_ and BlueSky @alecluhn.bsky.social U.K. Funds Geoengineering Experiments as Global Controversy Grows https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-k-funds-geoengineering-experiments-as-global-controversy-grows/ Geoengineering Wins Reluctant Interest from Scientists as Earth’s Climate Unravels https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/geoengineering-wins-reluctant-interest-from-scientists-as-earths-climate/ Tell us what you think! Take our survey for the chance to win some SciAm swag! http://sciencequickly.com/survey E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:28.9	Terms and conditions apply. For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feldman.
0:52.4	You don't have to pay much attention to the news to know that climate change is causing Arctic sea ice to melt
0:58.4	and understand that this is a huge problem.
1:01.9	Ice reflects sunlight, which helps keep cold places cold.
1:06.1	Warmer weather means less ice, but less ice means more heat from the sun,
1:10.2	which means it gets warmer, which means there's less ice, and less ice means more heat from the sun, which means it gets warmer,
1:11.5	which means there's less ice, and the sea level keeps rising and rising. It would be great
1:17.5	if we could cut this problem off at the source by dropping our greenhouse gas emissions,
1:21.6	but we're not exactly making great progress on that front. In the meantime, what if we could
1:27.2	just make more ice? It might sound silly,
1:30.7	but some folks in the polar geoengineering space are making a very serious attempt to do just that.
1:37.1	To get the inside scoop, I'm handing the reins over to Pulitzer Center Ocean Reporting Fellow
1:41.6	Alec Loon. He's the author of a feature on the subject in Scientific Americans' June issue,
1:47.1	and today he's going to take us along on a trip to the Arctic.
1:54.8	I'm snowmobiling out onto the sea ice from the Inuit Village of Cambridge Bay in Canada's Arctic archipelago.
2:02.6	It's negative 26 degrees Celsius. That's negative 15 degrees in Fahrenheit.
	...

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