Take a metre of powder snow, then melt and freeze, melt and freeze, and after eight to 10 years you have a centimetre of ice.

BBC: The perfect trip: Switzerland

When building on permafrost in northern Quebec, non-profit group Archimede Systems had to take into account the melt-and-freeze cycles of the seasons, the need to insulate heat, prevent condensation, and the necessity to keep the home from melting into the icy ground during a thaw.

FORBES: Arctic Refuge On Stilts--Kangiqsujuaq, Quebec

NASA's scientists have designed a device that would be carefully sterilised, and would then melt its way down through the ice, allowing the melt-water to freeze behind it to prevent contamination.

ECONOMIST: Planetary pretenders