West Antarctic Ice Sheet Essays

  • The Current Rising of Sea Levels

    1899 Words  | 4 Pages

    paper ... ...what is to come.36 Glaciers and ice sheets are going to continue to melt, and immediate barriers can only help for so long.36 5. CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, inundation events are dangerous hazards to coastal communities.1 These events are further exacerbated by sea level rise.1 Sea level rise is largely due to the warming climate, which causes thermal expansion of oceans, melting of ice caps and glaciers, and ice loss from major ice sheets.6, 11, 15 Current research suggests that sea

  • A Melting Planet

    2383 Words  | 5 Pages

    A Melting Planet Although most glaciers and ice sheets reside in areas that man does not inhabit, they are nevertheless important for society and the global environment. Due to anthropogenic activities over the past two centuries, the temperature of the earth is rising at an alarming rate. This rise in temperatures has resulted in an overall loss of ice mass worldwide, including a rapid depletion in mountain glaciers. The effects of glacial melt will have a significant impact on the future of

  • The Essay Global Warming Is Eroding Glacial Ice by Adrew C. Revkin

    555 Words  | 2 Pages

    Taking a Stand In the essay, “Global Warming is Eroding Glacial Ice,” Andrew C. Revkin argues that global warming is the primary cause for many of the world’s natural disasters; including flash floods, climate change, and the melting of the polar ice caps. He includes multiple accounts of expert testimony as well as a multitude amount of facts and statistics to support his theory that global warming is a threat to the world. However, in the essay “Cold Comfort for ‘Global Warming’,” Phillip Stott

  • The Problems of Glaciers Melting

    632 Words  | 2 Pages

    last thirty-five years all agree upon the notion of shrinking, and or retreating of the ice sheets. The melting of ice sheets has powerful implications for the millions of people who depend on glacial melt for drinking water and the millions of people who will be displaced by the sea level rise occurring as a direct result of the melting. The observations of ice melting also show that the rate at which the ice is melting is accelerating. Mountain glaciers around the world are also on the retreat.

  • Exploring Antarctica

    1441 Words  | 3 Pages

    AntarcticaAntarctica is the fifth largest of the seven continents. It is situated over the South Pole almost entirely south of latitude 66°30’ south (the Antarctic Circle). It is a very rough circular shape with the long arm of the Antarctic Peninsula stretching towards South America. There are two large indentations, the Ross and Weddell seas and their ice shelves. The nearest other land masses are South America 600 mls / 1000 km away across the roughest stretch of water in the world - the Drake

  • A Pandora's Box of Problems Waiting to Open

    1237 Words  | 3 Pages

    What comes to mind when you think of Antarctica? Far away, penguins, maybe a few scientists, and……ice. Antarctica is a continent located towards the Southern Pole and covered, completely, in ice. The ice has come and gone throughout history as the result of massive changes in climate and now, something is happening to it. The ice is depleting, though not as fast as the Arctic Ocean, and not quite the way you would think. And if we accept that it is depleting, what happens as the climate continues

  • Global Warming is a Myth

    771 Words  | 2 Pages

    Picture this: Your freezer breaks down. The temperature inside the freezer rises. The ice cubes start to melt and turn into liquid. The freezer starts to flood because of all the liquid from the ice cubes. Now, imagine that your freezer is the Earth. What your freezer has just experienced is similar to what happens to the Earth during global warming. Those who believe in global warming warn that it causes a significant rise in temperature in the Earth's atmosphere and oceans, but after doing

  • Contributing Factors of the Next Glacial Period

    1071 Words  | 3 Pages

    to prevent global warming from evolving into a bigger disaster than it already has or are people sitting back and letting things unfold similarly to a series of unfortunate events? Andrew C. Revkin, the author of “Global Warming Is Eroding Glacial Ice”, believes that the main cause of global warming is largely due to human activity. Revkin’s claims water glaciers are disappearing which is making an overall negative impact on global warming. He believes that melting trends are showing a negative effect

  • Lake Vostok Essay

    1324 Words  | 3 Pages

    Never before has Cousteau been so right. Until recently, it seemed humanity had discovered all it could about its habitat. However in 1996, when European ERS-1 satellite focused on the Antarctic shelf, it depicted Lake Vostok, a subglacial lake the size of Lake Ontario, completely isolated by a two mile sheet of ice for at least 14 million years.(Edwards, 2011) Theories of liquid bodies of water under Antarctica have been made as early as the late eighteen-hundreds. The existence of Lake Vostok itself

  • Evaporation In Antarctica

    671 Words  | 2 Pages

    extremes. As the coldest and driest continent on Earth, it has the highest average elevation. As the fifth largest continent in the world, Antarctica is most commonly known as the "South Pole". Ninety-eight percent of this landmass is covered by ice sheets to with an average depth of 1.25 miles has the coldest temperature on record. In recent decades the whale and seal population has begun to recover, but interest has grown in new resources, especially oil, minerals, fish, and tourism (Blanchfield)

  • How Is the Climate Influencing the Polar Ice Caps and How Has the Change with Polar Ice Caps Influenced the Global Climate?

    934 Words  | 2 Pages

    earth is the polar ice caps. There are three major prominent features, the Antarctic ice on the South Pole, the Arctic ice on the North Pole and Greenland on the north between North America and Europe. Antarctica consist about 90 percent of the world's ice (and 70 percent of its fresh water). It is covered with ice an average of 2,133 meters (7,000 feet) thick. If all of the Antarctic ice melted, sea levels around the world would rise about 61 meters (200 feet). The Arctic ice is not so thick in

  • Essay on Global Warming:

    1598 Words  | 4 Pages

    severe enough to cause another Little Ice Age. To answer the question about whether global warming could cause another ice age, I have divided this paper into segments. The first will explain what the thermohaline circulation cycle is. Next, I will look at the last interglacial period and observe what the conditions were like especially in respect to the THC. I will look at how the last interglacial led to the last great Ice Age, and the sudden demise of that Ice Age, as well as the nearly equally sudden

  • beach erosion

    3152 Words  | 7 Pages

    determined by the grounding line -- the upshot seems to be relative stability. "The ice streams do not appear to be susceptible to the kind of unstable retreat once envisaged," says Bentley. "Their flow is largely insensitive to the presence of the ice shelf so the grounding line would remain the same." Instead of possibly collapsing in 100 years, as was considered possible 10 years ago, Bentley says the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is more likely to collapse -- if at all -- in perhaps 5,000 years at the soonest

  • Little Ice Age Analysis

    981 Words  | 2 Pages

    the Little Ice Age. The term “Little Ice Age” (LIA) arose initially from observations that glaciers in Europe and other areas had stopped retreating and were instead growing during several periods within the last 1000 years (Free & Robock, 1999). By the 17th century, temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere had fallen half a degree Celsius compared to medieval times (Powell, 2012). Evidence of the Earth’s climatic record is exemplified through tree rings and ice cores. The Little Ice Age significantly

  • Inconvenient Truth By Al Gore

    736 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, former presidential nominee Al Gore illuminates the detrimental effects of global warming. Throughout the documentary, Gore discusses the scientific opinion on global warming, which at the time was considered to be a taboo, and argues that, though an “inconvenient truth,” global warming is an actual, catastrophic issue. He states that global warming “is not really a political issue, so much as a moral one.” In addition, Gore contends that global warming

  • Persuasive Essay On Global Warming

    718 Words  | 2 Pages

    It is time to take a step back, and look at what is happening all around the world. There are very dramatic changes happening to the the place we call home. Many people are unaware of the damage that has been done to earth, and the real harm that is coming along with it now. As humans have polluted and slowly destroyed our planet earth. If no actions are taken upon to help fix the damage already done, and help prevent more from happening global warming will shortly lead to death everywhere. Effects

  • Change In Apolarctica

    1402 Words  | 3 Pages

    For a long time it was hard for the first time, scientists of the Arctic Ocean, just 3 million years ago, Antarctica 34 million years ago, massive ice sheets that covered the ice, buy 65 million years ago, very warm, the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period rules to cool the planet as it slowly, eventually, fall (anti diverse than in the last century) place -trapping greenhouse gases was a little heat there. Both poles are at the same time, they do not freeze, therefore Ocean and atmosphere found

  • Essay On Climatewarming

    779 Words  | 2 Pages

    pollutants. Weather patterns may change with hurricanes probably hitting the coast farther north and with greater ferocity. Warmer temperatures would increase the volume of water in the oceans and possibly melt much of the ice in mountain glaciers and the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps ( Figure 2 ). This would cause sea level to rise, causing flooding of the world's coastal cities, where one-third of the world's population lives. Scientists learned is that there are several greenhouse gases responsible

  • Leonardo Dicaprio: Rhetorical Analysis

    865 Words  | 2 Pages

    He notes that, “ [w]e are seeing extreme weather events, and the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets melting at unprecedented rates, decades ahead of scientific projections” ( The Daily Conversation). Here Dicaprio use logos to back up his claims that the Earth is rapidly deteriorating. In doing this, he is able to strengthen and

  • Fighting Global Warming

    1210 Words  | 3 Pages

    Global warming has become a major issue discussed over Medias and governments all over the world today. It is a problem that threatens the whole world because of the destructive impacts it can have on us humans and to the environment. Global warming is not a new phenomenon. It is often referred to as the gradual rise of the earths near surface temperature as a result of increased emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities. The green house gases are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen, ozone