Most climate models suggest that all the efforts in limit and decrease carbon dioxide emission will not be enough to keep Earth from warming more than 2oC. So we will not only have to cut emissions off, we will also have to find a way to clean up all the gigantic amounts of carbon dioxide we have already put in the atmosphere in order to prevent even worse impacts in the loss of Antarctic and Arctic ice.
Since 1979, ice has shrunk by more than eleven percent per decade in the Arctic Ocean. Ice helps to cool the Arctic by reflecting part of the heat, so as it keeps shrinking, the temperature increases and thus the melting accelerates. Another big problem related the ice melting in the Arctic Ocean is that once the perennial sea ice is gone, it is practically impossible to get it back. So although the sea surface still freezes in the winter, the ice is never thick enough to survive the summer.
As I cited in my last blog, last year (2015) and the past decade were the warmest since temperature records began. As a result, an enormous part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is destined to collapse and therefore make the sea level rise at least four feet in the coming centuries. When sea levels rise rapidly, as they have been doing, even a small increase can have devastating effects on coastal habitats. As seawater reaches farther inland, it can cause destructive erosion, flooding of wetlands, contamination of aquifers and agricultural soils, and lost habitat for fish, birds, and plants. That will make scientists to redraw the map of the planet. Hence, we have a lot of work in front of us if we want to fix this problem.
References:
- Folger, T. (2015, December 23). Santa’s Home Is Melting. Will We Ever Bring It Back? Retrieved January 26, 2016, from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/151223-Arctic-ice-climate-change-global-warming-geoengineering-science/
- Kunzig, R. (2015, October 15). Fresh Hope for Combating Climate Change. Retrieved January 26, 2016, from http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/climate-change/introduction-text
- Gillis, J. (2016, January 20). 2015 Was Hottest Year in Historical Record, Scientists Say. Retrieved January 24, 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/science/earth/2015-hottest-year-global-warming.html?_r=0