Picture the Earth with more extreme weather, and less land for people to live on. Climate change has been a controversial topic since it was first discovered that humans were having an effect on the Earth’s environment.  Climate change is the changing of the Earth’s climate due to natural and unnatural causes.  Climate change has been recognized by the scientific community as the changing of the Earth’s climate as a result of human behavior.  The amount of ice on the planet is dropping every second, and this can have drastic effects on our planet.   Climate Change is causing the world’s ice to melt, and these effects are causing changing weather patterns, changes to the Earth’s gravitational field, and rising ocean levels.

Climate Change can be difficult to understand for some because they are just uninformed of what Climate Change truly is.  Scientists usually put the definition of climate change in outlandish scientific vocabulary, but a simple way to put climate change is that it is the change in the usual weather or climate found in a certain area.  This can be a change in temperature, or weather in a certain area.  Most of the scientific community agrees that this is happening around the world, but one place the disagree is over how much it is affecting our planet and our environment.  Many politicians say that climate change has little to no effect on our planet, and that it is a problem that could be put on the backburner since it has no relevance to us right now.  Many scientists argue that this is not the case, and that climate change is having a dramatic impact on us right now.  What many of the uniformed do not understand is that the effects of climate change are not going to be felt directly where they live, but have the most dramatic effects on our planet’s ice.  Places like Greenland, Antarctica, and the North Pole will suffer the most from climate change.  According to Peter Wadhams, “the total volume of Arctic sea ice in late summer has declined, according to two estimates, by 75 percent in half a century”.  This is a dramatic drop-off in the amount of ice that is in the arctic, and this is a big problem for our planet.  Many fear that the melting ice is past a point of no return, due to the rising amounts of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere (Montaigne).  So, what does all of this information mean for our planet?  The massive amounts of ice being melted is causing many changes in our planet that could end up being catastrophic.  One of the impacts it has on our planet has already been felt in the recent hurricane season that caused major damage to the mainland United States and Puerto Rico.

One of the effects of the melting ice on our planet is that it changes our weather patterns.  In recent months, the United States and the Caribbean Islands were ravaged by hurricane after hurricane that caused major flooding and did millions of dollars in damage to coastal cities.  Scientists believe that the melting of Arctic Ice is playing a major role in the changing weather patterns that are creating this major storm systems.  According to Fen Montaigne, “The loss of the great white dome of ice at the top of the world in summer will have profound effects, scientists say. These include a reduction of the amount of solar radiation reflected back into space by the ice, significant changes to the jet stream and Northern Hemispheric weather patterns.”  So, what this means is that the melting ice is causing our weather patterns to change.  The jet-stream, which helps with the flow of warm and cold air, is being distorted.  This causes more and more storms to develop due to the distorted flow of warm and cold air.  If there is a constant threat of large storms to develop in the Atlantic, this means that people will constantly be in danger of suffering catastrophic hurricanes such as Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma.  The threat of an increase in the quantity of large storms is not the only effect the melting ice will have on our weather patterns.  If the polar ice caps are reflecting more of the sun’s radiation back out of the atmosphere, that means that lowered amounts of ice will cause more radiation to stay in the atmosphere.  The, “Arctic Ocean absorbs huge amounts of solar radiation in summer, water temperatures are climbing by several degrees Fahrenheit, with some areas showing increases of 7 degrees F above the long-term average” (Wadhams). The increase in temperatures in the Arctic atmosphere is not only caused by the emission of Carbon Dioxide but is caused by the loss of ice as well.  This means that there are two powerful forces working against the ice, creating a rapid melting of the ice in the polar regions.  The Earth’s weather is not the only natural phenomenon that is being affected by the world’s melting ice.

Gravity is a natural occurrence that not many of us think about, but experience every day.   The melting of ice in Greenland is affecting the Earth’s gravitational field.  According to the Canadian Broadcasting Association, “rapid mass loss that's occurring in Greenland right now and it's actually changing the Earth's gravity field so quickly that we can detect it with satellite.”  Since Greenland and the Polar Ice Caps have such a large mass, they draw water towards it like the Earth is drawn to the sun.  This causes the cold water in Greenland and the Arctic regions to flow towards the Equator instead since the Ice caps and Greenland are losing mass, which causes loss of gravity (CBC).  This disruption of the flow of warm and cold water is causing colder water to reach the equator where the water is warmest.  This disrupts the habitats of fish and other sea creatures who depend on the circulation of warm and cold water.  Much of our food source comes from fishing in our oceans.  If their habitat is disrupted, it could potentially affect the amount of fish we get from fishing in the ocean.  Less fish means less food and less revenue that we would gain from fishing.  

It is scientific fact that ice is frozen water, and when ice melts it turns into water.  The polar ice caps and Greenland are just massive quantities of frozen water.  Since the ice is melting, that means that the ice caps are turning into water.  This leads to more water in our oceans which in turn causes a rise in the ocean levels.   “With the Greenland ice sheet experiencing summertime surface melting over 16 percent more of its surface area since 1979” (Woodard) and “the total volume of Arctic sea ice in late summer has declined, according to two estimates, by 75 percent in half a century” (Wadhams), one could expect our ocean levels to rise in the near future.  To give an exact number, scientists predict that the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet will cause a sea level rise of 20 feet, and the melting of the Greenland Ice sheet to raise sea level by 23 feet (Woodard).  If this is the case, many coastal cities are in severe danger of being flooded.  Cities like Miami and New Orleans are in the crosshairs because many parts of those respective cities are built under sea level.  The amount of damage the rise in sea level will cause would be catastrophic as many coastal communities would no longer be habitable.  Although many of these larger cities will not feel these effects for some time, there are Inuit Villages in Alaska that are beginning to feel the effects of the rising sea level.  There are multiple villages in Canada, Alaska, and Russia that are beginning to wash into the sea due to this occurrence (Woodard).  This should be headed as a warning to the rest of the world of what could happen if the world’s ice is allowed to continue to melt at the rate that it currently is.  Loss of habitable land is not the only side-effect of rising sea levels.

Drinking water is essential to human being because we require water to survive.  Without drinkable water, there would be no life.  The rise of sea levels due to the melting of the Earth’s ice caps could have a major effect on the world’s fresh-water.  According to a study performed by Italian Scientists, the sea-level rise would cause the amount of freshwater available to be depleted by 16.1% (“Groundwater Discharge”).  Since most of the Earth’s water is undrinkable, any loss of freshwater is significant because there just is not a lot of drinkable water available in the world.  Freshwater availability is something that we take for granted here in the United States, and I do not think we understand just how scarce it really is for the rest of the world.  This is one of the biggest effects of the melting ice caps because it has the biggest impact on humanity as a whole.  Less water means that more and more people are going to have to suffer from dehydration, which is a major problem in third world countries.  However, there are some that say that the melting of the world’s ice is not a major problem.

  It is often argued that problems like climate change, and the melting of the polar ice caps are not important problems because it is not as bad as many scientists fear.  According to a NASA Study, the Antarctic is, “Currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased loses from its thinning glaciers” (Gardner).  They claim that it is not as big of problem as some scientists say the melting of ice is for the world.  However, this not the case.  Most scientific evidence proves that the world is losing its ice, and that it is a prevalent issue.  An, “overwhelming majority of Arctic ice experts say that recent data offer powerful evidence that summer sea ice has passed a point of no return” (Montaigne) showing that the scientific community recognizes the melting of the world’s ice is a real issue that needs to be dealt with.  If the melting of the ice is “passed the point of no return” than the issue is truly an important matter because we have to do something to prevent the total elimination of ice on our planet.  The NASA study still recognizes that ice is being lost, they just believe that the world is still retaining more ice than it is losing.  

The melting of the worlds ice is having drastic effects on our planet, such as: causing rising ocean levels, changing weather patterns, and changes to the Earth’s gravitational field.  The melting of our planets ice is being caused by climate change.  Humans are contributing to climate change by pumping Carbon Dioxide into our atmosphere through its use of fossil fuels.  The only way to slow down the melting of our planets ice and the catastrophic effects it brings is to reduce climate change.  Everyone can help reduce climate change by reducing their carbon footprint on our planet.  This may mean the use of alternative energy over fossil fuels, or recycling your garbage rather than throwing it away.  Another way to fight the problem is to inform the uninformed of the problem.  People cannot do anything to fight the problem of the melting ice caps if they do not know what it is and what the causes and effects of it are.  The only way to stop the effects of climate change and the melting of our ice caps is to work together and find better ways to reduce our carbon imprint on the planet.  
