In the dim twilight of an Arctic winter’s day, with the low sun stretching its orange fingers across the frozen sea, a group of researchers drill a hole through the ice and insert a hydrogen-powered pump. It looks unremarkable — a piece of pipe protruding from a metal cylinder — but it holds many hopes for protecting this landscape. Soon, it is sucking up seawater from below and spewing it onto the surface, flooding the area with a thin layer of water.