First, the melting of ice caps and glaciers is releasing water into the oceans. Second, human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, combined with natural activities, it causes the rise of the earth's surface temperature.3 Second, climate change is already having a serious effect on every continent and throughout the world’s ocean. The consequences of sea level rise mainly reflected in three aspects: cultural heritages, indigenous communities and coastal lands. 4 First, sea level rise threats cultural world heritage. Data shows that 136 out of 700 listed cultural heritages throughout the world will be affected in the long term.
Many animals in Antarctica are dependent on ice, but as temperatures increase and ice melts, their populations decrease. There are many ice-loving penguins that are predicted to either drop dramatically in population or even go extinct, but this will allowed for open-water penguin populations to increase. To conclude, the environment of Antarctica is dependent on how the temperature changes, but no matter what, it will change with the temperature and changes will
The Earth’s average temperature has risen 0.6°C, while areas in the Arctic have risen up to 3.0°C in the last 20th century (Gardiner, 2008). Increasing temperatures have already caused changes in the Arctic such as; sea ice covering the Arctic has decreased in area and thickness due to melting of ice and snow, the warming of permafrost, snow cover area has also decreased, and ice on the rivers will freeze later during fall and break up earlier in spring. But why are these Polar Regions more vulnerable to climate change? This is due to the light colour of snow and ice and high albedo, which reflects the solar energy back into space. Due to the increase in greenhouse gases less solar energy is reflected back into space and more solar radiation is absorbed by the Earth causing the increase in ice and snow melting (Main & Ahlenius, 2011).
On average glaciers move about a meter each day due to the sliding over the bedrock beneath them and the internal deformation of the ice. Ice sheets are dome-shaped glaciers that cover about 19,300 square miles, and they move in all directions. A glacier can be classified as large or small. Large glaciers are called medial moraines and crevasses, and small glaciers are classified as glacier tables and cryoconite holes. Medial moraines are surface ridges of material near the middle of a glacier, and crevasses are wedge-like cracks in the surface of a glacier or of an ice sheet.
Global warming not only affects the darker suntan you get each summer, but the winters, the sea level, and the natural environment delicately teetering on the current balance of temperature. One of the largest concerns, the rapid mass loss of Greenland’s icecap, points to faster flow of glaciers and surface melting that will inevitably lead to warmer oceans, less salty oceans, a raise in sea level, and potential climate changes. Greenland is reported to be melting at double the speed it was only some years back. The slow yet steady flow of glaciers towards the sea has transformed into a sudden surge forward, alarming researchers who predicted a slower shrinkage. An increase in precipitation on the inside, along with continual high temperatures has cause the snow to melt, and serving as a run off that not only adds to the ocean level, but acts as a lubricant for glaciers to slide faster.
20th century warming is likely to be the biggest, during any century over the past 1,000 years for the Northern Hemisphere. Glaciers There has been a large retreat of mountain glaciers in non-polar regions during the 20th century. Northern hemisphere sea-ice extent has decreased 10% since the 1950s, and Arctic summer sea/ice thickness is likely to have decreased by 40%. Sea level has risen between 10 - 25 cm largely due to warmth expansion of the oceans and to a lesser extent due to the melting of land based Ice Mountains. The rate of sea level rise during the 20th century was about 10 times higher than the average rate during the last 3,000 years.
One piece of evidence from an ice age shows us that continental drift actually happened. One of the Earth’s ice ages is called Permo Carboniferous, It’s large glacial sediments had covered many countries. These glacial sediments covered South America, Africa, Madagascar, Arabia, India, Antarctica, and Australia. Permo Carboniferous happened about two hundred and fifty million years ago and was discovered by A.G. Smith in 1997. This is important, because these continents could not all have been frozen while they were apart.
During this season they mate in the sea and give birth on land or ice floes. Changes in the climate are affecting them just as they are affecting other species in the arctic. Global warming may seem more realistic for a mammal living in the north than it does to humans living in urban regions. Some of the coldest spots on Earth have warmed up and continue to warm up which is resulting in centuries old ice caps melting, rivers running dry, and coasts eroding and as a result, threatening communities[1]. Winters are shortening and sea ice is diminishing at a rate of about 3% per decade.
Throughout the past 40 million years our Earth has been in a continuous ice age. This period is considered an ice age because of the ongoing presence of an ice sheet that currently covers Antarctica. An ice age can be thought of as a period of time where the Earth’s climate is constantly reducing in temperature, which causes the formation of ice sheets and glaciers. This cooling of the Earth doesn’t happen all at once, it goes through cycles of warm and cold weather. The colder cycles are referred to as glacial periods and the warmer cycles are referred to as interglacial periods.
Recent studies have shown that ninety-seven percent of scientists believe that manmade actions cause climate change (Samenow). The inconvenient truth is that climate change is a reality that must be addressed. The environment has become polluted, unpredictable, and dangerous as a result of climate change. The three major effects of climate change are: flooding, drought, and spread of disease. Scientists studying the polar ice caps have observed consistent annual increases in the rates at which they are melting; this indicate, that the temperature of Earth’s water is increasing and sea levels are rising.