What will happen if the ice caps melt

 Large layers of ice and snow that cover 50,000 km2 of land are called ice caps. They are found in Antarctica, Greenland and portions of Canada and Russia. If the ice is covering more than 50,000 km2 they are called ice sheets. 

Ice caps have a tremendous impact on the geomorphology of the environment in which they exist. When a glacier retreats, it leaves behind plastic moulding, gouges, and other glacial erosional characteristics. Glacial activity has generated several lakes, including the Great Lakes of North America, as well as countless valleys over hundreds of thousands of years. They contain most of the planet’s freshwater.

The entire ice mass on Earth is around 30 million cubic kilometres. An ice mass's average temperature varies between 20 and 30 °C. The centre of an ice cap maintains a steady temperature between 15 and 20 °C.

 

What will happen if the ice caps melt?

Since the early 1900s, several glaciers throughout the world have been rapidly melting. This phenomenon is the result of human activity. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, in particular, have raised temperatures, particularly towards the poles, and as a result, glaciers are rapidly melting, breaching into the sea and retreating on land.

Even though it would take 5000 years for the icecaps to completely melt, there are a few things predicted to happen:

• Rise in sea level: The sea level is predicted to rise by 68.3 metres which will cause a lot of land to go underwater. This will cause damage to the geography of the planet. Higher sea levels cause more severe storms and typhoons to move more slowly and drop more rain, resulting in more violent storm surges. As a result, many coastal towns are already creating, often at considerable expenditure, adaptation methods to deal with the long-term prospect of increasing sea levels. 

• Extinction of the animals that live in the polar region: As sea ice melts owing to rising temperatures, animals in the Arctic and Antarctic regions are finding it increasingly difficult to get the food they require to thrive. According to the current study, polar bears rely on sea ice to hunt seals, which is their principal food source. However, as climate change accelerates the rise in temperatures at the poles, the spread of ice has slowed, leaving seals on land where it is more difficult to trap them. While bears may fast for months, their survival is determined by how much the energy they can save by eating ahead of time, how much energy they waste during the fast, and how long the fast lasts, according to the study. It's unknown how long the bears can fast before it impairs their capacity to breed or individual mortality, according to researchers.

• The Earth would be too hot for us to handle: Heat cramps, heat strokes and heat exhaustion are common heat illnesses that already happen, so imagine what will happen to us if the planet’s temperature increases by a whole lot. A combination of external heat from the environment and internal body heat created by metabolic activities can induce heat accumulation in the human body. Heat illnesses occur when the body's capacity to regulate temperature is compromised by rapid heat buildup caused by exposure to hotter than usual temperatures. Heat-related deaths and hospitalizations can happen quickly or take a long time to manifest, resulting in a faster death.

• Infiltration of saltwater in groundwater: Icecaps contain most of the planet’s freshwater. About one-third of worldwide water withdrawals come from groundwater, which also serves as a source of drinking water for a major section of the world's population. Which is under pressure in many areas, both in terms of quantity and quality. As a result, we must learn more about the effects of climate change on groundwater. Increases in mean temperature, precipitation variability, and sea level, as well as variations in mean precipitation, would impact groundwater recharge, i.e. long-term average renewable groundwater resources. Groundwater recharge is expected to rise in many locations as the globe warms, but in In many semi-arid areas that are currently experiencing water stress, groundwater recharge may decrease. Many flat coral islands may be left without a sustainable groundwater source when sea levels rise in the twenty-first century. Changes in groundwater recharge, rather than sea-level rise, have a greater influence on groundwater accessibility in coastal locations with a land surface elevation of a few metres or more. Due to increased temporal changes in river flow induced by increased precipitation unpredictability and decreasing snow/ice storage, a dependable surface water supply is anticipated to decline as a result of climate change. In these conditions, it may be advantageous to make use of groundwater's storage capacity and boost groundwater withdrawals. This strategy, however, is only viable if groundwater withdrawals are kept well below groundwater recharge. In locations where climate change is expected to reduce groundwater recharge, groundwater is unlikely to alleviate freshwater stress.

• Exposure to toxic chemicals: There are also many dangerous compounds in the ice sheets and some of our mountain glaciers, which are likely to get up in rivers and potable water. Camp Century was a military installation in northern Greenland during the Cold War. They dumped a lot of hazardous chemicals and radioactive materials in this area before abandoning the site, which is still frozen but melting. It will soon be exposed, and we don't know what will happen to us next.

• The Earth's rotation will be affected: The melting of the icecaps could alter the length of a day. The ice sheets are near to the Earth's axis of rotation, and they circle the poles. If you melt this ice, the water will circulate the Earth, moving further away from the rotational axis. As a result, the Earth will spin at a slower rate. It's difficult to estimate, but for a day, it'll probably be 10, 20 seconds longer.