Polar ice is sea ice created from the freezing of sea water, ice sheets and glaciers. These in turn are formed from the build up and compaction of fallen snow. Both the ice sheets and glaciers cover vast areas of the Polar Regions. This polar ice is hugely important to our globe and takes up a large part of it. Global sea-ice coverage averages about 25 million kilometers square; this is the area of the entire North America continent. The ice sheets, which cover the land, with the glaciers cover about 15 million kilometers square; this is almost 10% of the Earth’s land area, with the majority on Antarctica (Earthobservatory.nasa.gov, 2013).
With talk of global warming still being threatened by scientists and governments, the depletion of the polar ice is a major concern. Many experiments have been done to monitor current ice levels and predict future ice levels. Since then scientists have tried to discover what would cause the melting of our polar ice. One major concern is that the melting of the polar ice would create extreme flooding for all costal and island inhabitants. Is the polar ice melting and could greenhouse gases be the cause?
Mikhail Veritsky from Yale University set out to discover if an increase in Carbon Dioxide, a manmade greenhouse gas, would lead to the depletion of the Antarctic ice sheet. To predict this they create a numerical experiment using an atmospheric general circulation model connected to a 3D ice-sheet model. They found that even doubling the Carbon Dioxide concentration did not show any significant changes in the ice sheet. This implies that an Antarctic collapse of ice as a consequence of increased greenhouse gases is unlikely (Verbitsky & Saltzman, 1995).
In Greenland the ice sheets h...
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References
Dahl-Jensen, D. (2000). CLIMATE CHANGE: Enhanced: The Greenland Ice Sheet Reacts.. Science, 289(5478), 404-5.
Earthobservatory.nasa.gov (2013). Polar Ice Fact Sheet : Feature Articles. [online] Retrieved from: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/PolarIce/polar_ice.php [Accessed: 29 Nov 2013].
Nsidc.org (2013). A better year for the cryosphere | Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis. [online] Retrieved from: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2013/10/a-better-year-for-the-cryosphere/ [Accessed: 29 Nov 2013].
Toyota, T., Takatsuji, S. & Nakayama, M. (2006). Characteristics of sea ice floe size distribution in the seasonal ice zone. Geophysical research letters, 33 (2), 02616.
Verbitsky, M. & Saltzman, B. (1995). Behavior of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet as deduced from a coupled GCM/ice-sheet model. Geophysical research letters, 22 (21), 2913--2916.
It is an unquestioned fact that the climate is changing. There is abundant evidence that the world is becoming warmer and warmer. The temperature of the global land average temperature has increased by about 8.5 degrees centigrade from 1880 to 2012 (Karr, et al 406). The one or two degrees increase in temperature can cause dramatic and serious consequences to the earth as well as humans. More extreme weather occurs, such as heat waves and droughts. The Arctic Region is especially sensitive to global climate change. According to the data in recent decades, the temperature in the Arctic has increased by more than 2 degrees centigrade in the recent half century (Przybylak 316). Climate change has led to a series of environmental and ecological negative
Arrhenius estimated using the greenhouse gas effect theory, that if the total amount of the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere were cut in half the surface temperature of the Earth would decrease and if the opposite occurred and the carbon dioxide concentration doubled the temperature of the surface would in turn increase. His ideas remained under high scrutiny because of conflicting ideas that were successfully debunked in the1980s. In 1987, Stephen Schneider predicted that the Earth would warm at an exponential rate due to increased carbon dioxide emissions facilitated by humans. The majority of scientists agreed with his predictions and today his estimations are relatively close (Enzler). However, today many scientists are still disputing the effects global warming will have on the world and with good reason. On one hand, some theorists believe global warming is a catastrophic world event in which the Earth will become uninhabitable for life in a rather short period of time, between one to three hundred years (Edwards). On the other hand, the Earth will simply experience changes in its climates that cause increased strain on ecosystems and certain regions, which must adapt to their new climate for sustenance. Overall, the severity of the implications global warming presents has yet to be settled by scientists. This can be attributed to the fact that weather can be an incredibly complex entity to predict and climate is directly derived from all of the weather a region
People are responsible for higher carbon dioxide atmosphere emissions, while the Earth is now into the Little Ice Age, or just behind it. These factors together cause many years discussions of the main sources of climate changes and the temperature increasing as a result of human been or natural changes and its consequences; even if its lead to the global warming, or to the Earth’s cooling. In their articles, “Global Warming Is Eroding Glacial Ice” by Andrew C. Revkin and “Global Warming Is Not a Threat to Polar Ice” by Philip Stott, both authors discuss these two theories (Revkin 340; Stott 344). Revkin is right that global warming is taking place. Significant increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is due to human activities combined with natural factors such as volcanic emissions and solar radiation – all together they lead to climate changes and temperatures rising. At the same time, other factors such as deforestation contribute to environmental changes for some glaciers not less than air pollution. However, during global warming not all regions of the planet are affected in the same way, local warming and cooling are both possible during these changes.
The term snow is usually restricted to material that fall during precipitation in the form of small white ice crystals formed directly from the water vapour of the air at a temperature of less than 0°C and has not changed much since it fell. A fall of snow on a glacier surface is the first step in the formation of glacier ice, a process that is often long and complex (Cuffey and Paterson, 2010). The transformation of snow to ice occurs in the top layers of the glaciers and the time of the transformation depends mostly on the temperature. Snow develops into ice much more rapidly on Temperate glaciers, where periods of melting alternate with periods when wet snow refreezes, than in Polar glaciers, where the temperature remains well below the freezing point throughout the year. The density of new snow as it falls on glacier surface depends mostly on the weather conditions. In clam conditions, the density of new snow is ρs ≈ 50 – 70 kg m-3 (Table 1.1). If it is windy, there is breaking of the corners of snowflakes, and the density is more like ρs ≈ 100 kg m-3. After the snow has fallen on the surface, there are three processes that are all active together and work to transform the snow to ice.
The Arctic Tundra The Tundra is located in the northern regions of North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. as well as a few regions of Antarctica. The Tundra is the second largest vegetation. zone in Canada. It can be divided into three different sections: the High Arctic Tundra, the Low Arctic Tundra and the Alpine Tundra.
Also, Ice land is being affected drastically due to the rapid melting of the ice sheets. According to James Balog, he stated that "The south edges of ice land are melting closer and closer to the center, which is higher into the ice sheet." (Balog40:33). This is happening when there are pools in the ice glaciers and the go through canals under the ice sheet then it gets weak and just starts to slide off the side and this is called caving. This is from the snow melting and creating these pools.
The Greenland ice sheet is the second largest ice mass on Earth and is about one-tenth the volume of the Antarctic ice sheet. It is the only significant ice mass in the Arctic today. [ See Antarctica and Climate Change ; and Ice Sheets .] It is an ice-age relict that overlies a bowl-shaped continent almost completely fringed by coastal mountains.
In the debate concerning the fact that the polar ice caps are melting due to the heat increase, can be looked at as a false statement. Sea levels rising is because of climate change. 4 degrees Celsius is the temperature when water is the most dence. As the overall temperature of the water increases it also expands which naturally creates
Brief overview: John is in first grade, age six. The blue ice exploration took place within an empty classroom at the end of the day. The environment was familiar to both of us, quiet and there was plenty of room for us to have the bucket on the table. I had the other materials on a different table. I was really excited to try this experiment with John after seeing our guest Dr. Susan Rauchwerk conduct the same experiment. I had a list of “nuggets” I had written down prior to John joining me that I took away from our class time exploration. I was really hoping we could touch upon a few of these items. The materials used in this exploration were: a see-through bucket (similar to the size used in the classroom exploration), blue ice cubes, cold water, and a spoon.
Redd, N. T. (2012, July 18). Antarctica: Facts About the Coldest Continent. Retrieved May 6, 2018, from https://www.livescience.com/21677-antarctica-facts.html
Winter weather often includes snow and ice, two hazards that can create dangerous conditions on your commercial property. Prepare to keep your employees and customers safe when you prep your property for winter snow and ice removal.
The content from Tom Metcalfe furnished us with an inside and out depiction about how environmental change has influenced the Ice Shelf in the world's polar area, where their work occurred The dispatch of 9 specialists educated the group of onlookers on how the atmosphere has crumbled the Antarctic ice retire because of warmth permitting the infiltration of light. By recognizing the expansion in light introduction in the sea, the specialists which pigeon to watch changes saw an increment in biodiversity which in the Arctic locale is intensely constituted by marine life. They could reason that more species have been invited by the environmental change because of the light creating green growth drawing in marine life which thus influences the
Jacob, T., Wahr, J., Pfeffer, T. W., & Swenson, S. (2012). Recent contributions of glaciers and ice caps to sea level rise. Nature, 514-518. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature10847
the last 10,000. The satellite sturdy have had confirmed that the melting ice caps are raising sea
The movie cited the cause of the global climate change to be the rise in temperature due to greenhouse gasses. The warmer temperatures caused the polar ice caps to melt, and the increased amount of freshwater in the ocean disrupted the North Atlantic Current. The North Atlantic Current is what is responsible for the warm temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere. With the current disrupted the Northern Hemisphere went into an ice age. In real life, the polar ice caps are melting, but at a rate not even close to that of the one represented in the movie. Even if the ice was melting at a quicker rate, the chance that it would throw off the North Atlantic Current is slim to none. Also, there is no way that the ice would melt so quickly that a change that drastic would be made.