Dividen Up: Polar Ice Caps Melting For Kids

Think of it as ice in your glass of water melting. Turn off the.

Melting Ice Caps Facts For Kids

Today many scientists think global warming is causing the ice to melt and sea level to rise increasing the threat of floods.

Polar ice caps melting for kids. Watch the arctic sea ice melting and refreezing over time in this video clip. The warming of the ice caps and the ocean as a whole is preventing certain plankton from growing. Since this is where polar bears seals and other animals in this climate live they are losing their homes and their entire species is being threatened.

But as the temperatures warm these platforms are melting and they have to make longer and more difficult journeys to catch their prey. A polar ice cap is body of ice in a high latitude region of a plant. Polar bears rely on sea ice as a platform for them to drift on and catch their prey.

Climate change is widely believed to be the cause of shrinking polar caps so here are a few ways you can do your part to tackle global warming. Polar ice caps what can you do. Since then the ice has gradually melted and the ice sheets have retreated.

More climate change activities for kids find out how cows contribute to global warming. This plankton serves as a. According to nasa the polar ice caps are melting at an alarming rate of 9 per decade.

As part of the overall climate change phenomenon the polar ice caps melting is an effect of trapped greenhouse gas emissions. According to scientists at the us center for atmospheric research if the current rate of global temperature rise continues the arctic will be free of ice by 2040. Penguins who live in the antarctica region are also losing their environment as the polar ice caps melt.

This activity is obviously dramatic and oversimplified but a great visual demonstration of some of the consequences of melting polar ice caps and ice sheets. Causes of polar ice caps melting. On earth the polar ice caps are made up mostly of water ice but on other planets they can include other compounds as well.

Some ice also occurs as glaciers in mountainous regions and as floating ice floes in the arctic. About 20000 years ago much of europe asia north and south america was covered by huge sheets of ice each many kilometres thick. The polar ice caps on earth are located at the north pole and the south pole.

While parts of this giant area of frozen seawater melt and refreeze from season to season the sea ice cover reached its lowest point in the 2007 arctic summer almost 25 less ice cover than the former low point of 2005. Although the ice caps have undergone drastic changes in the last 12000 years they are becoming more dramatic today because. Ice caps and mountain glaciers often grow or shrink.

The thickness of the arctic ice has decreased by 40 since the 1960s. There is also a huge area of ice in the arctic but this is quite thin and floats on the ocean. Even though not all scientists agree on the problem of global warming the melting trend has been debated in various studies.

Today the only ice sheets on earths land masses are found in antarctica and greenland. The largest ice sheets on land cover antarctica and greenland.

Why Is The Arctic Melting Faster Than The Antarctic Environment