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What Does It Mean To Lose an Ice Cap?

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WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LOSE AN ICE CAP?

1.  The disappearance of sea ice leading to greater absorption of solar radiation

2.  A switch from forests being net absorbers of carbon dioxide to net producers

3.  Melting permafrost, releasing trapped methane

4.  Destruction of wildlife
The arctic is the home for much unique wildlife, for example polar bear, Arctic fox, walrus, and many kinds of marine mammals. They are beginning to extinct because they do not have a place to live.

5. Slowing of the Gulf Stream
The vast ocean current that gives Britain its temperate climate is powered partly by the cooling and sinking of water under the Arctic ice shelves as they re-grow each winter. Recently, however, the shelves have been smaller and thinner than in the past and there are signs the Gulf Stream is slowing. Such a process could radically change European climates.

6. More storms
The same warming is likely to make summers hotter and drier and winters wetter and a lot stormier. The risk of a true hurricane hitting the UK – now once every 300 years – is likely to increase along with the frequency of other storms.

7. Squelchy Siberia
The steppes of western Siberia – once made of rock-hard permafrost – are starting to squelch. The region has experienced one of the fastest rates of warming in the world and is now 3C above normal. Western Siberia is full of peat and other organic matter that could release billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere if they melt.