What Melting Ice In The Polar Regions Means To Us

I came across a tweet the other day. A lady said that we’re being too upset about the ice sheets melting in Greenland. She said something along this line, “ice sheets melt in summer, what’s the big deal?” To her, the reported severity is fake news.

Naturally, it made me upset. But I quickly realized that I don’t know exactly what losing ice sheets do to us either. If a self-proclaimed environment-lover doesn’t know the full extent of the problem, who am I to fault her?

So, I researched on what melting ice in the polar regions means to us. This includes the melting of permafrost, ice sheets, and glaciers.

As a result of our high carbon emissions, we’ve set global warming in motion. With a warmer globe, ice has been melting earlier in spring and freezing later.

Just this July, the ice sheets in Greenland lost 197 billion tons of ice, three times more than the expected average. But it’s not just happening in Greenland.

Everywhere on Earth ice is changing. The famed snows of Kilimanjaro have melted more than 80 percent since 1912. Glaciers in the Garhwal Himalaya in India are retreating so fast that researchers believe that most central and eastern Himalayan glaciers could virtually disappear by 2035. Arctic sea ice has thinned significantly over the past half century, and its extent has declined by about 10 percent in the past 30 years.  Daniel Glick, National Geographic

What does it mean to us, to lose all these ice?

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The Consequences of Melting Ice in The Polar Regions

1. Melting ice over permafrost and ocean speeds up the melting process

Ice is very reflective. When sunlight shines on it, it reflects heat off into space and reduces the amount of heat on the ice.

As the ice melts, whether over permafrost or the ocean, they reveal the darker earth or ocean underneath. The darker color causes the earth or ocean to absorb heat instead of reflecting it off, resulting in more melting.

Subsequently, the heat that’s absorbed by the earth or ocean gets released into the atmosphere, resulting in more warming.

With a warmer ocean, the melting of ice could be sped up where warmer seawater touches the ice sheets.

2. Melting ice release greenhouse gases

The melting of permafrost releases carbon dioxide and methane that were trapped in them. Carbon dioxide is produced when roots respire and bacteria break down organic matter, while methane is produced by bacteria under anaerobic conditions.

When ice sheets and glaciers melt, the melt-water constantly flushes out tons of methane produced by microorganisms from the ice sheet beds into the atmosphere.

These greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere and worsen global warming.

Note the escalating effects here. Once this warming, melting and release cycle is activated, it becomes a loop that feeds itself. It always terrifies me to think about it.

3. Melt-water changes the density of seawater, affecting its circulation

Deep ocean currents are caused by thermohaline circulation, which is propelled by changes in the density of the water and regulates the temperature, oxygen, and nutrients in the ocean. It does for the ocean pretty much what our blood circulation does for us. Two things affect water density — temperature (thermo) and salinity (haline).

Let’s look at how it works with the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation as an example. 

Through surface currents, warm water from tropical Atlantic flows toward the North Pole, where it releases heat into the air. Cold and salty, this water becomes denser and sinks deeper into the ocean, warmer surface water takes its place, while the denser cold water flows back into South Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. There, they mix in with the warmer water and rise back to the surface. The process repeats.

Since melt-water is causing the oceans in the far north to lose its salinity, and global warming is heating up sea temperatures, water density is changing. Hence, the thermohaline circulation risks being disrupted or even stopped. When that happens, temperature, oxygen and nutrients regulation in the ocean would be affected.

Needless to say, marine life would be the first to take the hit. But it doesn’t stop there, researchers believe that disruption to the thermohaline circulation could drastically change the climate in as little as 10 years.

4. Rising sea levels, eroding shoreline and intruding saltwater

If the Greenland Ice Sheet melted or moved into the ocean, global sea level would rise approximately 6.5 meters. Climate and Ice, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

We all know that as permafrost, glaciers and ice sheets melt, sea level rises. With more than 100 million people living within 3 feet of mean sea level, sea level rises would have catastrophic effects on coastal populations. We can be sure that there’ll be more and more evacuations of coastal communities in the future.

Consequences of rising sea level are already observable in Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, where water is encroaching on what were residential areas less than 40 years ago.

Needless to say, major coastal cities like New York, Miami, Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Rio, and Jakarta would all be at risk.

Furthermore, with every inch of seawater rise, we may lose 8 feet of beach by soil erosion. Like sea level rising isn’t problematic enough. The beach as we know it is going to change.

What’s more, the increasing amount of seawater could flow into toward land, causing saltwater intrusion into freshwater sources.

Since saltwater cannot be used for consumption and growing crops, saltwater intrusion has dire consequences for countries that rely heavily on their groundwater supply.

Also, saltwater intrusion can kill trees and plants.

5. It impacts the lives of people and animals in the polar regions

In Alaska and Siberia, the melting of permafrost has caused buildings to warp as their foundations melt. The ground is becoming unstable, putting power lines, roads, and buildings at risk of becoming damaged. Can you imagine how inconvenient and potentially dangerous life has become for communities in the polar regions?

In addition, polar animals would be affected in three ways:

1. Some animals forage/hunt for food on the ice. Losing these ice means losing territory on which they can forage or hunt in.
2. Melt-water would make the ocean warmer and less salty, disrupting “deep water formation”, which provides nutrient-rich water that supports the entire marine ecosystem. A lack of nutrient-rich water reduces the phytoplankton population.
3. Loss of polar ice meant a reduction in krill.

Phytoplankton, algae, and krill are important players in the base of the polar and marine food chains. When the base of the food web shrinks, it’ll cause shortages of food all the way up the food chain. The population of fishes, birds, penguins, seals, arctic foxes, polar bears, and whales etc will all be affected.

The entire marine food chain will shrink.

About algae

Even though the warming climate has caused algae to grow faster and should theoretically mean more food for some animals, it comes with side effects. 

Algae growth darkens the surface of ice. As mentioned above, darker surfaces absorb more heat. Unfortunately, the excess algae growth caused by global warming is also contributing to the melting of polar ice.

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A Note About Feedback Loops

I hope you have a better picture of what the melting ice sheet in Greenland means to us now. The more I learn about how earth works, the worse I feel about the entire situation.

If you look at the list, you’ll see that several of them create bad feedback loops. Loops we’ve set in motion.

• Surface melting –> more heat absorbed by uncovered darker surfaces –> more melting
• Melting –> more heat-trapping greenhouse gases released –> more melting
• Melting –> loss of nutrient-rich water –> reduced phytoplankton population –> more carbon dioxide in atmosphere –> more melting
• Warmer climate -> increase algal growth -> darker ice surface that adsorbs heat -> more melting

Coupled with our continual high carbon emissions (and the Amazon forest is on fire as I type this), I can’t imagine how we’re going to stop these loops and the melting of ice sheets. Yet, we have to try. 

The Call-to-Action

I hope you have a better picture of what the melting ice sheet in Greenland means to us now. 

Even though most of us don’t live there, melting ice in the polar regions affects all of us. Similarly, no matter where we live, what we do impacts on ice in the polar regions. All of us have to do our part in the climate crisis.

Things we can do:

• Support politicians and causes that protect the environment, including forests and the ocean
• Support renewable energy
• Choose products made by companies with sustainable practices
• Reduce your carbon emission in every way you can – be it in your transportation, air-conditioning habits or diet. Some ideas here.
• Plant trees
• Reduce your use of paper and/ wood products, and make sure they’re Forest Stewardship Council-certified or Rainforest Alliance-certified
• Avoid single-use plastic – plastic is made from fossil fuels
• Respect all your resources – everything we own/consume/trash has a carbon footprint. Wear them out and recycle properly
• Arm yourself with knowledge for motivation to reduce your carbon footprint, and share that knowledge

We’re all in this together.

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