Cat -3

Problem Based Activity Report

Submitted by – Shruti Mishra

B tech. Computer-science (2nd semester)

Under the Supervision of – Mr. Arvind Jain Sir

Division of Environmental Science

School of Basic and Applied Science
GALGOTIAS UNIVERSITY
Uttar Pradesh
July 2021
Table of Contents
 Introduction

 Problem Statement

 Discussion

 Conclusion

 References
 Introduction
Global ice loss has increased rapidly over the past two decades, and scientists are
still underestimating just how much sea levels could rise, according to alarming
new research published this month.

From the thin ice shield covering most of the Arctic Ocean to the mile-thick
mantle of the polar ice sheets, ice losses have soared from about 760 billion tons
per year in the 1990s to more than 1.2 trillion tons per year in the 2010s, a new
study released Monday shows. That is an increase of more than 60 percent,
equating to 28 trillion tons of melted ice in total — and it means that roughly 3
percent of all the extra energy trapped within Earth’s system by climate change
has gone toward turning ice into water.

“That’s like more than 10,000 ‘Back to the Future’ lightning strikes per second of
energy melting ice around-the-clock since 1994,” said William Colgan, an ice-
sheet expert at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. “That is just a
bonkers amount of energy.”
 Problem Statement

Most of us do not live in polar regions. We do not come in contact with icebergs
or ice sheets very often. Most of us have only seen these things in photographs.
However, no matter where you live, the snow and ice of the Earth’s cryosphere
has an impact on your climate.
Because the cryosphere - the icy part of our planet - is so interconnected with
other parts of the Earth system, what happens in the cryosphere affects the
whole Earth. As climate change causes temperature to rise, ice melts. Much of
this ice is in the Arctic and Antarctic, but the planet as a whole is affected by
changes in these polar regions as ice melts. So what happens in the cryosphere
does not stay in the cryosphere.

Some of the reasons that changes to the cryosphere affect the planet as a whole
are because of feedbacks that cause more warming. Scientists are currently
studying just how much the frozen places on Earth affect the rate of climate
change. Below are some of the ways that the cryosphere has been affecting
climate change through interactions with other parts of the system and feedbacks
that increase the rate of global warming. Additionally, melting ice has other side
effects on the planet - such as sea level rise.
Melting ice causes more warming.
When solar radiation hits snow and ice, approximately 90% of it is reflected back
out to space. As global warming causes more snow and ice to melt each summer,
the ocean and land that were underneath the ice are exposed at the Earth’s
surface. Because they are darker in color, the ocean and land absorb more
incoming solar radiation, and then release the heat to the atmosphere. This
causes more global warming. In this way, melting ice causes more warming and so
more ice melts. This is known as a feedback. According to a recent scientific study
that used computer models to predict the future of Arctic sea ice, there may be
no more sea ice left in the Arctic Ocean during summer within the next few
decades.

Melting permafrost releases greenhouse gases.

Global warming is causing soils in the polar regions that have been frozen for as
much as 40,000 years to thaw. As they thaw, carbon trapped within the soils is
released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane. These gases,
released to the atmosphere, cause more warming, which then thaws more the
frozen soil.

Less ice on land means sea level rises.

Sea level has been rising about 1-2 millimeters each year as the Earth has become
warmer. Some of the sea level rise is due to melting glaciers and ice sheets which
add water to the oceans that was once trapped on land. Certain glaciers and ice
sheets are particularly vulnerable. Global warming has caused them to be less
stable, to move faster towards the ocean, and add more ice into the water. These
areas with less stable ice include the Greenland Ice Sheet and the West Antarctic
Ice Sheet. If the Greenland Ice Sheet melted or moved into the ocean, global sea
level would rise approximately 6.5 meters. If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet were to
melt or move into the ocean, global sea level would rise approximately 8 meters.
 Discussion
Why are ice caps melting?
Since the early 1900s, many ice caps around the world have been rapidly melting.
Human activities are at the root of this phenomenon. Specifically, since the
industrial revolution, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions have
raised temperatures, even higher in the poles, and as a result, glaciers are rapidly
melting, calving off into the sea and retreating on land.
Even if we significantly curb emissions in the coming decades, more than a third of
the world’s remaining glaciers will melt before the year 2100. When it comes to
sea ice, 95% of the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic is already gone.
Scientists project that if emissions continue to rise unchecked, the Arctic could be
ice free in the summer as soon as the year 2040 as ocean and air temperatures
continue to rise rapidly.
Melting Ice Caps: The Effects
Melting glaciers add to rising sea levels, which in turn increases coastal erosion
and elevates storm surge as warming air and ocean temperatures create more
frequent and intense coastal storms like hurricanes and typhoons. Specifically, the
Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are the largest contributors of global sea level
rise. Right now, the Greenland ice sheet is disappearing four times faster than in
2003 and already contributes 20% of current sea level rise.
How much and how quickly these Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt in the
future will largely determine how much ocean levels rise in the future. If emissions
continue to rise, the current rate of melting on the Greenland ice sheet is expected
to double by the end of the century. Alarmingly, if all the ice on Greenland melted,
it would raise global sea levels by 20 feet.

How do melting sea ice and glaciers affect weather patterns?

Today, the Arctic is warming twice as fast as anywhere on earth, and the sea ice
there is declining by more than 10% every 10 years. As this ice melts, darker
patches of ocean start to emerge, eliminating the effect that previously cooled
the poles, creating warmer air temperatures and in turn disrupting normal
patterns of ocean circulation. Research shows the polar vortex is appearing
outside of the Arctic more frequently because of changes to the jet stream,
caused by a combination of warming air and ocean temperatures in the Arctic and
the tropics.
The glacial melt we are witnessing today in Antarctic and Greenland is changing
the circulation of the Atlantic Ocean and has been linked to collapse of fisheries in
the Gulf of Maine and more destructive storms and hurricanes around the planet.

What are the effects of melting glaciers and sea ice loss on humans and wildlife?
What happens in these places has consequences across the entire globe. As sea
ice and glaciers melt and oceans warm, ocean currents will continue to disrupt
weather patterns worldwide. Industries that thrive on vibrant fisheries will be
affected as warmer waters change where and when fish spawn. Coastal
communities will continue to face billion-dollar disaster recovery bills as flooding
becomes more frequent and storms become more intense. People are not the
only ones impacted. In the Arctic, as sea ice melts, wildlife like walrus are losing
their home and polar bears are spending more time on land, causing higher rates
of conflict between people and bears.

Effects on Living Beings

Effects of Melting Ice Glaciers on Humans and the Environment

1. Shortage of electricity
A lot of places all over the world depend exclusively on the constantly flowing
water from glaciers that are melting in producing electricity. Reducing or stopping
the flowing of water will mean stopping the production of electricity. The modern
world cannot do without electricity, in which case people will resort to other
forms of producing electricity, some of which will end up polluting the
environment and further increase global warming.

2. Extreme flooding
There are areas that have ice glaciers on higher altitudes, and they are all thawing
quickly, the melting is causing an abrupt rise in water input to other water bodies
such as the rivers, lakes, and seas. The excess water may lead to the creation of
new lakes that will continue growing in size.
These happenings are very alarming because the water bodies could be very large
in volume. The result is overflowing, which will be a major disaster as they will
destroy everything on its way, and making thousands of people homeless like the
case in Bangladesh.

3. Biodiversity loss and animals losing homes

There are a lot of living organisms that rely mainly on glaciers for continued
existence. Some animals require the cool temperatures for their day to day
activities like the blue bear.
Certain birds also rely on fish that are found in freshly melting glaciers. With the
increasing water temperatures and water levels, this will start affecting aquatic
plants. In consequence, the fish species will reduce and so will be the survival of
the birds and animals that are dependent and adapted to the glacier habitats.
4. Coral Reefs will disappear
Coral reefs need sunlight for the process of photosynthesis, enabling their
survival. When water levels increase due to glacier melting, sufficient sunlight will
not be able to reach the corals.

This will weaken their quality, and probably end up killing them in the long run.
There are fish species that depend on the corals for food, without the coral reefs,
they will also die. Additionally, individuals who rely on fish for food in such areas
will be affected.

5. Recontamination of the environment

A lot of individuals may not be familiar with DDT and a lot of other such pesticides
because they were banned all over the globe years ago. Research says that a lot
of such chemical pollutants and pesticides became airborne and finally got
deposited in the chilly places that contain glaciers, and for some time, the harmful
chemicals stayed trapped in the layers. The rapid melting of glaciers is now
discharging the chemicals back into the surroundings and water bodies.

6. The economic costs of melting ice glaciers affect the whole world
The consequences of ice glaciers melting have not only been restricted to one
part of the world, but to the whole globe. Each continent is experiencing the
adverse effects of quickly melting ice glaciers such as flooding and other glacier-
related disasters, which require huge intervention financial capital to mitigate.
The worst part is that it is not possible to stop the fast melting of the glaciers due
to the escalating rate of global warming.

7. Reduction of agricultural production

Agricultural plants that mainly depend on the rain will most likely not get affected
by the melting glaciers. Nevertheless, such places are few and do not contribute
to the major portion of agricultural lands. In the dry periods, fresh water from
glaciers will be in short supply, causing drying of the land which is not suitable for
farming. The consequence will be a reduction in overall agricultural production.

8. Scarcity of fresh water

Studies show that only 2% of the water available is fresh water that people can
consume. Over 70% consists of glaciers and snow. Water that has melted gets
renewed by turning into ice through cooling to form glaciers. In lots of areas in
the universe, it is the main source of fresh. However, with the increase in
population and reducing the mass of glaciers, there will be a serious scarcity of
fresh water in the coming years.

9. Increasing global warming

Glaciers play a significant role in reflecting and absorbing the heat on earth. This
means that as glaciers keep on melting, temperatures all over the world will at
the same rate keep on increasing. In some places, small ice glaciers have already
disappeared, exposing the earth. The earth is not able to deflect as much heat as
glaciers can thus heat will keep on increasing, more glaciers continue melting and
water levels keep on increasing.
 What are we doing to protect the ice bergs from melting?

An engineer has devised a way to stop Arctic ice from melting by scattering
millions of tiny glass beads to reflect sunlight away
The tiny spheres Ice911 has developed look more like grains of sand than beads.
They're manufactured from silica, a compound made of silicon and oxygen,
because the material is abundant in the natural world and harmless to humans
and animals. Field described the microspheres as "small, fine, white beach sand"
that floats. In a sense, the material is a lot like snow. The reflective beads stick to
ice and water on contact, and their chemical composition ensures they don't
attract oil-based pollutants. Simulations done by Ice911 suggest that using the
technology to restore ice reflectivity could help lower temperatures by 1.5
degrees Celsius over a large part of the northern Arctic.
But so far, the technology is still in the field-test phase. Field said Ice911 started
with "a very small experiment in buckets" on the deck of her own home, then
conducted small tests at a lake in the Sierra Nevada mountains and a pond in
Minnesota.
In the last two years, Field and her colleagues have brought the microspheres to
the Arctic, where they spread the material over a frozen lake near Utqiaġvik
(Barrow), Alaska. The results, some of which were reported in a May 2018 study,
suggest the silica beads did indeed increase ice reflectivity and thickness.
 Conclusion
The statistics are grim. Collectively, the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets lose
around 466 tons of ice a year on average. That’s more than 1.1 billion tons every
day. The water from those liquefying ice sheets pours into the oceans, inching sea
levels higher and higher.
There’s little sign that the melting of the ice caps will slow any time soon. If
anything, it’s going to get exponentially faster, scientists say. Like the glaciers
themselves, it’s a process that begins slowly but carries with it a terrifying
momentum.
The ice caps store 99 percent of all the freshwater on Earth. It is a staggering
amount of water, and the significance is readily apparent if you’ve ever stood on
the shore of one of North America’s Great Lakes and gazed outward to the watery
horizon. All that water, enough that it appears to be an inland sea, is but a
fraction of what’s carried within the solid bulk of Antarctica.
Together, the ice in Antarctica and Greenland would raise Earth’s sea levels by
around 230 feet if it all melted. The seas would eat up an appreciable portion of
the planet’s current land, drowning coastal cities like New York, Los Angeles and
Houston. Low-lying Florida would simply disappear. And Antarctica, once a snowy
wasteland, would become a rocky archipelago, free of the overlying ice and
partially submerged by rising seas.
But an Earth completely free of ice isn’t going to happen within our lifetimes, or
likely even within the next few thousand years. Most projections put sea-level rise
at around a foot by 2100 — far less than what’s possible. By the next century,
Earth’s ice sheets will still be firmly in place, if diminished.
The last thing we should take away from that fact is a sense of complacency,
however. Even small changes in sea levels carry dire consequences. That single
foot of sea-level rise could devastate low-lying coastal cities and force massive
migrations inland. And melting glaciers have the potential to alter ocean currents,
which could change global weather patterns in unpredictable ways.
 References

1. “The Ice Caps Are Melting. Will They Ever Disappear

Completely?”,
https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/the-ice-caps-
are-melting-will-they-ever-disappear-completely
2. “Earth is now losing 1.2 trillion tons of ice each year. And it’s
going to get worse”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-
environment/2021/01/25/ice-melt-quickens-greenland-glaciers/
3. “Why are glaciers and sea ice melting?”,
https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/why-are-glaciers-and-sea-
ice-melting.
4. “Antarctica, Greenland ice sheet melting matches worst-case
climate change scenarios”,
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/antarctica-
greenland-ice-sheet-melting-matches-worst-case-climate-
change-scenarios-study-73150.
5. “Causes of Global Warming”.
http://www.wmo.int/pages/themes/climate/causes_of_global_wa
rming.php, Accessed 29 May 2015.
6. NASA Global Climate Change,’ (2015) Global Climate Change:
How do we know? Retrieved on 05.05.2015 from
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
THANK YOU