Modeling the impact of localized artificial enhancement of Sea Ice Albedo in the Arctic

With the recent dramatic changes seen in the Arctic sea ice cover, the Earth's northern polar cap is transitioning to a new climate of thinner, younger and faster seasonal sea ice. Diminishing summer ice in the Arctic leads to a positive feedback of increased radiative forcing which leads to further warming. Enhancing the sea ice albedo artificially could be a possible lever to restoring the Arctic sea ice. Field et al (2018) reported an innovative technology using reflective hollow glass spheres with low environmental impact that could be promising towards restoring Arctic Sea Ice. Extensive climate modeling and impact assessment of this technology deployed globally over all the sea ice region have been presented by Bhattacharyya et al (2018) and Field et al (2018). Their study shows that the climate impact of this method results in 1.5°C cooler temperatures over a large part of the Arctic with notable increases in sea ice thickness (20-50 cm) and (>15-20%) increases in sea ice concentration across the central Arctic. Such a technology may be a viable instrument for restoring Arctic ice, although a localized targeted deployment of the technology may be practicable and cost effective. To that end, we present here the preliminary climate modeling and impact assessment of such a technology when deployed regionally in the Fram Strait. We analyze whether an enhanced sea ice albedo over this small region of Arctic sea ice would produce a large enough perturbation to the climate in the Arctic and if so what would be its likely impact.