♪ Narrator: Flooding water onto the surface using electric powered pumps.

It's a simple but labor intensive process that encourages the natural formation of ice.

It's extremely tough to work in the Arctic, particularly for equipment and people.

Anything electronic fails really quickly.

Thankfully, it's quite physical, what we're doing in a sense, because it keeps us warm.

But again, it is it can be quite, quite literally backbreaking work.

Narrator: From December till February, the team from Real Ice will repeatedly pump water across the surface of one square kilometer.

Installing pumps in the morning.

And then, as each day ends, returning to retrieve them so the pumps don't freeze over and buckle in the ice.

All right, let's go to the next one, yeah.

Narrator: Inch by inch, the sea ice should grow thicker.

The scene called that makes this possible also makes everything more perilous.

This again.

Three.

Two.

One.

It's tough, but it's good.

There's nothing quite like the Arctic to humble you, right?

I realize that humans aren't as indestructible as we think we are.

One more, put it down first.

Yeah, all right.

We use the momentum.

All right, hree, two, one.

This is something that is, you know, I feel is in grasp of finding some knowledge to just be clear, to determine whether this is viable or not.

You know, humankind is incredibly innovative.

And I find the furtherance of knowledge and research incredibly exciting.

That's it.

Narrator: As one of the Inuit guides for the team since their first field season, Pamela Nakashook is keen to see how the Real Ice experiment is progressing.

After weeks of flooding and the ice building layer by layer, the results should now be visible.

How much ice did you measure so far?

The thickness?

It's measured ice today that got up to 130cm.

That's crazy.

How is it taking them out?

Do they freeze?

It's pretty tough, yeah.

Oh.

Yeah that's why we were drilling two holes with the auger to try to give us more space to pull them out.

Is it easier?

A little bit.

Darn.

See if it'll start.

There we go.

I do have hope.

I think it will work.

I think it will help a lot with the climate change for sea ice.

I think it could solve a lot of our problems.