Photo: Ken Cheung/Pexels
Every winter, the IJsmeester (ice master) in villages around the Netherlands floods a field with water to form enough thin layers of ice to create a perfect outdoor skating rink. Now a Dutch startup wants to use that idea to help solve shrinking Arctic ice. Arctic Reflections chief executive Fonger Ypma recently joined a Bangor University spinoff, Real Ice, for field tests in Iqaluktuuttiaq (Cambridge Bay), Nunavut, Canada, which pump seawater up through the ice and let it refreeze at the surface. For Arctic Reflections, the key aim is to boost the ice’s ability to reflect the sun’s rays back to the atmosphere, and to explore whether Arctic currents could spread ice thickened at strategic locations. But there are still unanswered questions, such as how ice thinner than three meters will react to flooding and whether thicker ice will last.
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