Sea ice breakup in winter
Sea ice can be an effective insulator between colder winter air and the warmer ocean below, thereby reducing the potential dissipation of heat into space.
Sea ice & icebergs
Modular iceberg creation by submersibles
In 2019, an Indonesian design team came up with the idea of a submersible device that could take in sea water, desalinate it, and then have it freeze into a solid block they called a “new ice baby” (Griffiths, 2019).
Ice shields and “volcanoes”
Similar to other ideas to pump water on sea ice (see Sea ice thickening), engineer Sev Clarke (Planetary Restoration n.d.) and engineering student Katy Cartlidge (University of Cambridge 2022) both came up with designs to artificially produce sea ice.
Iceberg management
With rising Arctic temperatures, there have been major changes in iceberg production rates from marine terminating glaciers. These icebergs drift into warmer sea waters where they will slowly melt.
Sea ice albedo modification
Apart from thickening sea ice by directly adding mass to it (see sea ice thickening), it has been suggested that the ice could also be protected by increasing its albedo and thereby reducing the amount of absorbed energy (Field et al. 2018).
