Vanishing Ice Caps

 

Many people around the world don’t realize how much ice we lose in the Northern ice caps and how it could affect us.  But many scientists do, and they study this so they can project what it could like in a few years and how it’s going to affect us.  The ice (in millions of square kilometers) lost 5.25 sq. km. in 1980 and 10 sq. km. in 2012, which shows that, since 1980, the ice has been disappearing two fold.

Each year the arctic ice melts more and more.  Records show that September ice (September marks the yearly minimum of sea ice in the arctic) decreased at a rate of 7.8 percent every decade from 1953-2006.  NCAR scientist Marika Holland one of the study’s co-authors says, “While the ice is disappearing faster than the computer models indicate, both observations and the models point in the same direction: the Arctic is losing ice at an increasingly rapid pace and the impact of greenhouse gases is growing (Marika Holland).”

 

This link tells you about the affects the ice has on the planet and the record low million sq. km of ice in just the past year.  Geography professor John Yackel talks about how long until all the ice is gone.  On September 18, 2007, the Northern ice cap had shrunk to an all time low of 4.7 million sq. km.  But then, in the summer of 2012 on August 26 the Northern ice cap shrunk to 4.1 million sq. km, which is now the smallest it’s ever been.  In August, the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, CO, had recorded a burst of melting which they think was the cause of it.  At present, the ice seems to be losing about 75,000 sq. km, which is about the size of South Carolina, and has nearly doubled the rate observed in 1979.

All in all, the arctic glaciers are melting very fast and are slowly changing the climate everywhere else.  And as the ice melts the ocean levels raise and in the future part of our coast could disappear.  Also the area of ice in the ocean is and has been falling very fast as observed in the 1970s and 1980s.

 

 

This video is about how much glaciers are melting and what is affecting them.  It also suggests that since the ice is melting, weather elsewhere will change.

 

How much millions of square kilometers has the area of ocean with about 15% sea ice gone down from 1981-2010?

How many square kilometers are the Northern ice caps in 2007?

How much square kilometers of ice are we losing each year?

5 thoughts on “Vanishing Ice Caps

  1. We are losing 78,000square kilometers of ice each year. That is approximately the state of Maine scientists have said. I’m very surprised by that because I didn’t know you could lose that much ice within a year. With the shrinking of ice in 2013 the ice has shrank to its lowest extent ever recorded. Glaciologist Walt Meier says that this year’s summer melting will unlikely break that record. In this website http://m.livescience.com/39147-arctic-sea-ice-melting.html it shows a great animation of Artic sea ice melting during the summer. With the sea ice meting we will have some global consequences. One of them is that it could affect the position of the jet stream. What this means is that it pushes around the cold air and warm air, which plays a huge role in our weather patterns and determining them. Also the Arctic ice has huge stores of methane in the sea bed which ultimately it can cause spikes in temperature. The less sea ice, it makes storms a whole dangerous that could pummel and erode the coastlines says multiple scientists. The shrinking ice cap has already affected some cities on coastlines. One of them being the multiple cities of the coast of Alaska one of our own United States. This is probably the biggest consequence of them all. NASA in 2016 are going to launch a satellite called ICESat-2 to study more of how climate change is affecting the ice melt.

  2. After reading your article I was surprised to see how much I we are and will be losing in the next 50 years. I did more research on the topic and I found over the next 20 years carbon dioxide will double or even triple. The ice cap its self is reflecting sunlight energy back into space and not absorbing it into ground. If the melting doesn’t stop scientist say that it could weaken the North Atlantic Current from the sea ice. Calving has been occurring from the Ross Ice Shelf which means bigger ice bergs. Here is the link from my research http://www.ecology.com/2011/09/11/earth-warms-thinning-arctic-ice/ !

  3. After reading your article I was surprised to see how much I we are and will be losing in the next 50 years. I did more research on the topic and I found over the next 20 years carbon dioxide will double or even triple. The ice cap its self is reflecting sunlight energy back into space and not absorbing it into ground. If the melting doesn’t stop scientist say that it could weaken the North Atlantic Current from the sea ice. Calving has been occurring from the Ross Ice Shelf which means bigger ice bergs. Here is the link from my research http://www.ecology.com/2011/09/11/earth-warms-thinning-arctic-ice/

  4. After reading the article I was very convinced in what you said I did some research on this topic and found that the ice is melting very quickly. Scientists know this there a ice shelf called the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf and it has been around for 3,000 year and it started cracking in the year 2002. Images from NASA confirm that the ice has been melting. The satellites show that the ice is melting 9 percent each decade. The polar ice cap is shrinking at pretty fast rate from what scientists predict. Here is the link to the site talking about the conditions:
    http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/qthinice.asp

  5. After reading your article i was surprised to find that the estimates you found for your blog, may in fact be wrong. A site on http://www.sciencenews.org/ says that the ice caps are expected to release a lot less into the ocean, and raise the ocean about 18.3 centimeters, instead of the 35 centimeters projected before. Which means the ice caps are melting at a lot slower rate than what was projected earlier. Here is a link to the site talking about the rise in the sea: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/350253/description/News_in_Brief_Ice_loss_from_Greenlands_glaciers_may_level_off

Leave a Reply to emmanuelladosspring14 Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *