A significant amount of research being conducted by scientists for global warming concerns the melting of the polar ice caps. Located at the north and south poles are gigantic sheets of solid ice. These sheets have been frozen for thousands of years and contain approximately one fifth of the world's fresh water. If the planet is truly getting warmer then these are the regions that are going to be affected the most. Since the early nineteen seventies there has been a steady trend of this ice melting very quickly and it has the scientific community awestruck.
Since the global warming research has began approximately thirty years ago the temperature of the world's polar regions have all ready increased by four to seven degrees Fahrenheit. This gradual warming effect has shrank these ice caps by 13,000 square kilometers in the last fifty years according to news.bbc, an organization of British scientists. If this trend continue then these rates of melting are only going to increase.
As the ice caps continue to disappear there will be other long term effects that emerge. Wildlife that is native to the polar regions such as polar bears, seals, penguins, walruses, and several species of birds will die from there loss of habitat. Also due to this melting of the ice, sea levels will rise drastically. Low lying areas such as Florida, and Louisiana will be enveloped by the oceans creating massive destruction and economical hardships.
Even though the planet is getting warmer according to research, there is still hope. If humans simply cut down on fossil fuels,we can easily extend the amount of time before any of these horrible effects become to late. Also technology is producing new ways for us to harness natural energy that will not have the after effects of the fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases.
References
http://www.news.bbc.com
http://www.news.nationalgeographic.com/
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3 comments:
We can save the Icecaps
The great ocean conveyors carry a huge amount of hot water from the tropics towards the poles.
Take the Gulf Stream; it shifts heat equivalent to 100 times the entire world energy demand.
However 99.9% of this heat is dumped throughout the North Atlantic, so that by the time the water reaches the Arctic it is cold and dense enough to sink. Thus although the Gulf Stream moves huge amounts of heat horizontally, it transfers very little to the deep ocean; indeed scientists calculate that it will take 10,000 years to bury the excess heat we have currently generated.
A side effect of this unwanted heat is that more and more icecap gets melted in order to cool the seawater sufficiently for it to sink.
It seems absurd that in the tropics, 27ºC surface water is only some 3kms away (vertically) from 2ºC bottom water, but there is no mixing because of density difference. Instead it has to travel 9,000kms round the conveyor, melting the icecaps en route.
If we could find a way to pump this surface water down, it would only take a modest volume to shift an enormous amount of heat, while short-circuiting the long route to the pole and back.
Calculations show that a thousand wave-powered pumps of the sort we could build with current offshore technology would be sufficient to compress the 10,000 year process into a century, without affecting the average ocean temperature by more than one quarter of a degree.
Furthermore, because of the non-linear thermal expansion of water and the avoidance of ice-melt, ocean levels would only be affected by one third of the predicted amount.
For details of how to pump hot water down (or cold water up) see http://www.globalwarmingresponse.org
Roger Clark
Roger@GlobalWarmingResponse.org
You have attracted quite a good readership already! I'm impressed. Good points here, and nice use of links to show us where we can find more information. My one main question: where in the text is the National Geographic reference used? I can see the BBC citation/link.
What do you think about Roger's response? I'm about to check out his site.
Thanks for the comments you left on my global warming blog. I read the blog entries you have created so far, and I must say, I am liking your research and your posts better than mine! Actually, ever since I have been researching about Global Warming, I find so much to write about, yet they are all facts so I kind of get confused on how I should reword this or how I should put in my words. Maybe that’s why you see a ton of quotes on my blog entry but little of my own words. Could you give me a piece of advice on this if you don’t mind? Ok, apart from that, I have something to share with you. You know, as I was researching about global warming for this class, I also found some information on the polar ice caps. It is sad to say that this is reality and it is happening right in front of our eyes. Thankfully, there is still something we can do that might possibly help like saving energy. I am also going to do one my entries on the ice caps, so I thought I should share some information with you and it would probably help us both out. As I was researching about this, I came to find out that the sea levels could possibly rise by several meters by the end of the century! I tried to put a picture on here for you but I couldn’t, so I have included a website for you that shows the before and after pictures of the Upsala Glacier which was taken in 1928 and is compared to a picture taken in 2004. I really liked this photograph because just by glancing at it once, anyone can see the changes that are taking place due to global warming. This is the photo I will use for my next blog entry but I thought I should share this with you since we are on the same page here. Hope you enjoy it, and if you’d like you can also use this picture and the information provided. Hope this helps!!
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1176980,00.html
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