Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Arctic Melting

Arctic Melting. PLease read yahoo article if interested

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071211/ap_on_sc/arctic_mel

I was reading how just last year experts predicted that the end of summer melt of the Arctic could be complete by 2040. Now an expert thinks that there will be no single solid mass of ice outside of floating individual icebergs by the end of summer 2012. This prediction is very ominous although logical.

Ice reflects the heat of the sun whereas the ocean being blue absorbs more of the heat of the sun. As the ice melts there is more blue ocean to absorb the heat. If we compare the northern hemisphere to a glass of soda with ice left in direct sunlight I'm sure all of us have noticed what happens when the last of the ice begins to melt from the sunlight. Fairly suddenly after the last ice is gone the soda is warm. The same will happen exponentially fast with polar northern waters rising in temperature very quickly.Another possibility is that when the snow falls the following winter of 2012 that the only place the snow will be able to stick because of rising ocean temperatures will be on the icebergs themselves. This would mean that earlier and earlier each year all the ice even in icebergs would melt. What this will do to worldwide weather we can only imagine. What will this will do to the Greenland ice shelf? Likely, within a few years of the north pole ice cap being gone in the summer we will also see the end of all Greenland ice too. There might be some great movies made of the last of the ice sliding into the sea from Greenland and turning into icebergs. Greenland then will live its namesake as an actual Greenland once again as in the Dark Ages.

Another question I have had that has been nagging me is what happens when all this weight in the form of ice disperses as both water and water vapor all over the planet. Yes, it is true that ice melts slowly so the change is gradual but it is still a lot of weight change as to the balance of earth in its orbit as it spins. Does this extreme change in weight dispersal affect the balance of earth or affect its rotation? What other changes to earth besides the heating affect on the northern hemisphere are taking place?

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