Arctic sea ice is melting rapidly and the first ice-free/blue Arctic (

The importance of the sea ice on all these levels and the risk of it disappearing even with rapid emissions reduction and scaling of greenhouse gas removal means there is increasing interest in techniques to directly protect the sea ice. The two methods investigated here involve pumping of seawater on top of the ice to thicken it directly by bypassing the natural ice’s insulating effect; “Surface Thickening”. Or to flood the snow on top of sea ice, converting it to more conductive ‘snow ice’ thereby increasing the rate of natural freezing, “Snow Flooding”. These techniques and their impact on the growth of sea ice has not yet been thoroughly investigated. Experiments both from both the lab and field experiments are presented together with modelling showing the impact of the techniques on ice thickness and how the end of winter thickness can be increased.