Melting Ice Caps The Arctic is global warming’s canary in the coal mine. It is a highly sensitive area which is profoundly affected by the changing climate. The average temperature in the Arctic is rising twice as fast as elsewhere in the world (nrdc.org). Because of this, the ice cap is getting thinner, melting away, and rupturing. Here is an example of this; the largest ice block in the Arctic, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, had been around for 3000 years before it started cracking in 2000 (nrdc.org) By 2002, the Ward Hunt has cracked completely through and had started breaking into smaller pieces. The melting ice caps are affecting the earth and its inhabitants in many ways. In this paper, the following concepts and subjects will be …show more content…

According to a 2001 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study, this increase would inundate some 22,400 square miles of land along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, primarily in North Caroline, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida (nrdc.org). Melting ice caps would not only cause rising water levels, but would also mean a warmer Arctic temperature as well. A warmer Arctic will also affect weather patterns and thus food production around the world. Wheat farming in Kansas, for example, would be profoundly affected by the loss of ice cover in the Arctic. According to a NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies computer model, Kansas would be 4 degrees warmer in the winter without Arctic ice, which normally creates cold air masses that frequently slide southward into the United States. Warmer winters are bad news for wheat farmers, who need freezing temperatures to grow winter wheat. In summer, warmer days would rob Kansas soil of 10 percent of its moisture, drying out valuable cropland (nrdc.org). The biggest contributing factor to the melting ice caps is global warming. So, in order to stop of slow down the melting of the ice caps, we would have to take steps to stop global warming (washingtonpost.com). Global warming is caused by heat-trapping gases called green house gases. These gases are produced when we burn fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas. A step to help stop global warming would be to save energy