With decreasing temperatures in the ice sheet, the size of the brine pockets decreases while the salt content goes up.

Freezing-if saline water is frozen in such a way that salt crystals or brine pockets are not trapped in the ice crystals, the resulting ice will be essentially free of minerals.

As the temperature of the ice rises the dopants come out of frozen solution and form liquid brine pockets.

These brine pockets slowly drain out of the ice sheet thus weakening it.

The sea ice also harbours several species of algae that live in the bottom and inside unfrozen brine pockets in the ice.

Due to the brine pockets, congelation ice on seawater is neither as hard nor as transparent as fresh water ice.

As the water freezes, the salt molecules are squeezed out, first into little brine pockets and later (especially if the ice lasts more than one year) into the ocean.