Glacial Melting Though Global Acclimate

Glacial Melting

Though global acclimate change has been debated much over the last 20 years the debate seems to be coming to an end, with regard to the masses of evidence of its occurrence, at an extremely accelerated rate over the last 50 years. Global climate change in its current state is creating massive glacial melting, which can have devastating effects on the earth. Glacial melting, will eventually cause massive shifts in the composition and breadth of the ocean, which will likely cause shorelines in many low lying areas to disappear under a wake of differently composed sea water. There will likely be loss of biodiversity, as many island nations and shoreline areas are a center fro biodiversity and will be underwater. Additionally, the arctic regions also play host to diverse species that will no longer be able to find the space and food they need once the ocean temperatures rise and the ice disappears.

How much should we worry about global climate change and other forms of environmental degradation? Any lingering doubts about its occurrence, as well as humankind's influence, are quickly fading amid new reports of faster-than-expected glacial melting (Overpeck et al. 2006) and unprecedented rates of species loss, deforestation, desertification, and water shortages (Hughes et al. 2003; Jackson et al. 2001; Thomas et al. 2004). (Schwartz, Parker, Glass, and Hu 1807)

Glacial melting has been occurring for some time, at an accelerated rate, most believe as a result of human interventions on the earth, technology, encroachment, deforestation, burning of massive amounts of fuel which produce carbon emitting gases that have degraded the atmospheric protection of the earth.

Scientists suspect the enhanced melting is linked to human-influenced climate change. Air temperatures in the region have risen by more than 2 degrees Celsius in 50 years, one of the fastest warming rates in the world. But they also say topography, wind and precipitation patterns, and changing ocean conditions could play a role.

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There are many causes that together make up the result of markedly higher temperatures, reaching the polar ice caps today. These trends are not showing signs of marked reversal, and many argue that anything people do today, in an attempt to reverse glacial melting may be simply, to little to late.

Scientists have released the most compelling evidence yet that certain glaciers in Antarctica are melting rapidly. In April, researchers with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the U.S. Geological Survey reported that 87% of 244 marine glaciers they surveyed on the Antarctic Peninsula have retreated markedly in the last 50 years

According to a collaborative group of scientists who have been studying glacial melting (over the last 50 years) for the last three or more years are convinced by the data that the numbers look not only bad but startling and that this rate of melting has never been seen on this earth. "Loss of all ice on the Antarctic Peninsula would raise oceans by an estimated 0.3 meters."

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Other parts of Antarctica have seen signs of melting as well. Scientists report accelerated glacial drainage from the massive West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels seven meters. In all, Antarctica is home to more than 90% of the world's ice. The three-year effort... is the most comprehensive study to date of ice loss on the peninsula, a narrow chain of mountains stretching towards South America. To assess glacial trends, the researchers analyzed more than 2,000 aerial and satellite photographs dating back to the 1940s. The study suggests that marine glaciers are retreating by about 50 meters a year, although one (the Widdowson Glacier) has lost more than a kilometer of ice annually in the past five years. The loss is relatively new, scientists say, as most of the glaciers were growing as recently as 50 years ago.

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Coastal effects will likely be th e most devastating, as some island nations completely disappear, or become so close to submersion that they and the waters surrounding them cannot support life as we know it.

Island nations may be beautiful, but their isolation makes them vulnerable to outside forces that increasingly threaten their survival. Rising sea levels linked to global warming could submerge some altogether. Tuvalu, a West Pacific nation whose peak height rises just 5 meters over sea level, could be uninhabitable within 50 years, some experts say. A similar fate could also doom the Maldives, the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and Tokelau. Of all the threats facing island nations, the rise in sea level could be the most catastrophic....in the early 1990s, satellites began generating more comprehensive profiles of global sea level. Thanks to these orbiting systems, scientists now know that the average global rate of sea level rise has increased 50% during the last 12 years -- up to 3 millimeters per year from a 50-year annual average of 2 millimeters,...NASA..

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When we discuss this issue we often slide back to the points which most effect the humans who will be effected by this long-term trend that is rapidly being exposed as a serious short-term trend with devastating long-term effects.

It's estimated that more than a hundred million lives are potentially impacted by a one-meter increase in sea level," Abdalati says. In the meantime, even the comparatively small increases in sea level seen today can produce large effects, particularly when superimposed on high tides and storm surges, says Laury Miller, who heads NASA's Satellite Altimetry Laboratory. Miller adds that as a first impact, rising seas contaminate freshwater resources.

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Two of the ways in which this occurs is through desalination and the development of massive growth in often toxic algae growth, which is traditionally kept in check by salt content and low temperature but will be spurned on when these natural growth barriers are removed by global climate change and glacial fresh water. "Eutrophication of water bodies has always been part of the natural cycle in waters ranging from highly oligotrophic alpine lakes on land newly exposed by glacial melting to shallow, eutrophic lowland ponds."

Pitois, Jackson, and Wood 25) Another way in which water content and volume can change the face of the earth is that the salt water of the ocean reaches in to existing fresh water sources, and though this diluted system can seem to become logically cleaner it becomes incapable of sustaining human existence and biodiversity in the fresh water systems that are balanced by weather and isolation from sea water.