He Ice plays a fundamental role in our lives. And not only for aspects such as food, drink, refrigeration, health and other applications. It is also important to maintain a balance on the planet.
In fact, a large fraction of the Earth’s ice is frozen: it is stored in glaciers around the world and in the layers of Greenland and Antarctica. However, due to global warming, ice blocks are melting, notes NASA. But what would happen if the ice on the entire planet melted?
What would happen if all the ice on Earth melted?
The melting of the polar ice caps has often been described in popular culture as a tsunami-inducing Armageddon. In “The Day After Tomorrow,” that 2004 disaster movie, the warming of the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic currents cause rapid polar melting. The result is a massive mass of ocean water flooding New York City and beyond, killing millions in the process. And like the recent polar vortex in the Northern Hemisphere, frozen air is rushing in from the poles to spark another ice age.
But, they are not completely far from what could happen, because according to NASA, when the ice melts or breaks off, the water flows to the oceans and sea level rises. This elevation, at extreme levels, could cause coastal effects, economic damage and even changes in the Earth’s rotation.
And that would mean, according to a report prepared by Business Insider, that many large cities could be underwater, mainly Tokyo, New York, Barcelona, London, Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, San Francisco or Lima.
Situations that, in turn, would have as a consequence the loss of life, damage to infrastructure and the built environment, salinization of coastal aquifers, mobilization of pollutantschanges in sediment budgets, coastal erosion and changes in the ecosystemsas well as the loss of marshes and threats to endangered flora and fauna.
The threat is the amount of ice
If all the glaciers and ice sheets melted, Global sea level would rise between 60 and 70 metersbecause on Earth there are more than 20 million cubic kilometers of ice.
According to scientists, they should melt within 5 thousand years. However, if we continue dumping carbon into the atmosphere, we will most likely get an ice-free planet in the short term. This could mean an increase in the average Earth temperature from 14ºC to 27ºC.
In fact, this could mean because tropical storms, hurricanes or tidal waves are reaching areas that were not previously red flags during these events, mainly because the water continues to rise by 0.1 meters constantly.
The Earth’s rotation would also be affected
If meltwater were to flow into the ocean, it could change the planet’s rotation, because of the principles of rotation, which dictate that the Earth’s rotation speed increases if its mass approaches the axis of rotation.
That is to say, if the Greenland ice sheet melted completely and meltwater completely flowed into the ocean, global sea level would rise by about seven meters and the Earth would rotate more slowlywhich would lengthen the length of the day compared to the current one by about 2 milliseconds.