The Seablog

So the polar ice sheets are melting: 3 reasons why you should care.

1.

There’s a lot of bad things that could happen if the polar ice sheets melt. I think one of the more frightening aspects is the evil cycle that ensues with melting ice in the polar oceans. Ice has a very high albedo (that is, the percentage of incoming radiation thats reflected back), and the snow covered ice of the poles can have an albedo of up to 85-90%. This is partly what keeps it so cold up there. the open ocean only has an albedo of around 7%. Which means that most of the solar heat is retained by the ocean. So the more ice that melts, the faster the poles heat, and the faster more ice will melt. Due to this, the antarctic has some of the fastest raising temperatures in the world, up to 4 degrees c in the last 100 years.

2.

As ice melts, new shipping routes and massive reserves of oil are uncovered that have been covered in ice for thousands of years. This means that ships will be going through areas that have been previously undisturbed, and drilling for can start in places that’s been previously left alone. This is a problem on the north pole mostly, and it could have a huge impact on the animal life and their habitats. On top of that, isn’t the idea that we’re supposed to cut down on fossil fuels? This will certainly not help.

3.

So far, a lot of sea based ice has been melting, while this has some environmental impact, it’s not as great as what happens when the freshwater land based ice starts to go. In the antarctic massive ice shelfs are breaking up (such as the Ellesmere and Larsen ice shelfs). This doesn’t affect sea level much as ice shelfs float on the sea. That’s not the problem: these ice shelfs are holding back massive glaciers from flowing out into the sea, Antarctic ice shelfs pretty much keep the Antarctic ice sheet in place. If they go, the glaciers tip into the water and the sea levels can raise dramatically. It’s estimated that if the antarctic ice sheet should completely melt, sea levels would raise around 60 meters. While this is unlikely, it’s still quite a scary thought, and a sea level rise of 4-6 meters could happen if this continues.

Pictured above is the Larsen ice shelf before and after the breakup, and a glacier in Greenland.