Dividen Up: Polar Ice Cap Melt

This animation shows how the multi year sea ice area an estimation of the total volume of multi year ice in the arctic ocean has evolved from 1980 to 2012. If we keep burning fossil fuels indefinitely global warming will eventually melt all the ice at the poles and on mountaintops raising sea level by 216 feet.

Sea Rise Ice Melt Spokes Of The Wheel

Even though not all scientists agree on the problem of global warming the melting trend has been debated in various studies.

Polar ice cap melt. A polar ice cap or polar cap is a high latitude region of a planet dwarf planet or natural satellite that is covered in ice. Multi year sea ice or ice that has survived at least two melt seasons in the arctic is shrinking rapidly. In fact in most parts of the continent it never gets above freezing.

Satellite video of polar ice cap melting over the last 20 years because of climate change. The march 2020 arctic sea ice extent was 1478 million square kilometers 571 million square miles. Explore what the worlds new.

There are no requirements with respect to size or composition for a body of ice to be termed a polar ice cap nor any geological requirement for it to be over land. This was the eleventh lowest in the satellite record 650000 square kilometers 251000 square miles below the 1981 to 2020 march average and 490000 square kilometers 189000 square miles above the record low march extent in 2017. The melting of polar ice caps effects include rising sea levels damage to the environment and displacement of indigenous people in the north.

Nasagoddard scientific visualization studio. Only that it must be a body of solid phase matter in the polar region. If the ice caps melt too much it will cover most of the earth in water.

As part of the overall climate change phenomenon the polar ice caps melting is an effect of trapped greenhouse gas emissions. Causes of polar ice caps melting. Polar bears at risk of starvation as sea ice melts 27022020 melting sea ice caused by global warming is making it more difficult for polar bears to hunt seals.

But the average temperature in antarctica is 370c so the ice there is in no danger of melting. While the debate on the impact of humans on climate change rages on the polar ice caps in the arctic antarctic and greenland continue to melt. If all of the antarctic ice melted sea levels around the world would rise about 61 meters 200 feet.

Antarctica is covered with ice an average of 2133 meters 7000 feet thick. When the ice melts more rapidly then it freezes it causes a chain reaction that results in melting ice caps over time.

Greenland Ice Sheet Today Surface Melt Data Presented By Nsidc