Page - October 19, 2006
As the Earth warms, its ice melts. This global melting is an early and obvious sign of climate change, but its implications go far beyond merely losing snow and ice. For starters, some people and ecosystems depend on the ice - glaciers for water supply in areas of seasonal rainfall, for example, and sea ice for habitat.
The melting of land ice is already raising sea levels. In some
fairlylikely scenarios, oceans would rise by meters worldwide
withdevastating results. A sea level rise of just one metre would
displacetens of millions of people in Bangladesh alone. All of
thismelting ice could dilute the world's oceans - changing the
salinityenough to hurt fish stocks and disrupt ocean circulation
patternsglobally.
Thenthere is the chance that melting ice will cause a feedback
effect dueto the fact that snow and ice reflect more sunlight than
bare ground orwater so less ice means more warming (which melts
more ice, etc.).
See also:
Arctic and Antarctic melting,
Glaciers, Sea level
rise and
Ocean circulation