Each decade around 13% of the ice in the Arctic Ocean is lost, but scientists are now exploring whether new technology can help refreeze the sea ice and halt its rapid decline.
Such is the rate of climate change in the region that experts believe, without intervention, it could be "ice-free in the summer in the 2030s", said the New Scientist, with devastating worldwide consequences.
The level of Arctic sea ice has declined starkly in recent decades due to increasing global emissions and the "oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic has declined by a stunning 95%" since the 1980s, said the World Wildlife Fund.
At this point, there is some consensus that even if "greenhouse gas emissions are sharply reduced" immediately, the Arctic would still be free of summer ice by the next decade, said The Guardian. Research published last year suggests 90% of the melting had been due to "human-caused global heating", the paper added, and now the world must prepare for the knock-on effects including rising sea levels and more extreme summer heat and winter cold, as well as loss of habitat for wildlife.
Stopping the thaw would take an effective global effort to reduce carbon emissions, but in the shorter term, scientists have proposed numerous innovative solutions to try and quell the impact.
The Arctic Ice Project has put forward the idea of "sprinkling parts of the Arctic with a thin layer of glass beads" which could "boost surface reflectivity and create more ice" and start a "cooling feedback loop", said The Guardian.
Other solutions include building "free-floating" underwater sea walls that "block the warm ocean currents from melting the glacier from below" and mimicking the cooling effect caused by some natural events like volcanic eruptions. The latter is perhaps the most controversial, as it involves "releasing calcium carbonate into the stratosphere" that can block solar radiation and could damage the ozone layer in the long term.
The solution gaining the most traction appears to be the "audacious" refreezing proposal which is hoped can make the ice "thicker and longer-lasting", said The Times.
