Relationship To Global Warming and Climate Change
Sea ice provides an ecosystem for various polar species, particularly the polar bear, whose environment is being threatened as global warming causes the ice to melt a bit more as the Earth’s temperature gets warmer. Furthermore, the sea ice itself functions to help keep polar climates cool, since the ice exists in expansive enough amounts to maintain a cold environment. At this, sea ice’s relationship with global warming is cyclical; the ice helps to maintain cool climates, but as the global temperature increases, the ice melts, and is less effective in keeping those climates cold. The bright, shiny surface of the ice also serves a role in maintaining cooler polar temperatures by reflecting much of the sunlight that hits it back into space. As the sea ice melts, its surface area shrinks, diminishing the size of the reflective surface and therefore causing the earth to absorb more of the sun’s heat. Though the size of the ice floes is affected by the seasons, even a small change in global temperature can greatly affect the amount of sea ice, and due to the shrinking reflective surface that keeps the ocean cool, this sparks a cycle of ice shrinking and temperatures warming. As a result, the polar regions are the most susceptible places to climate change on the planet.
Furthermore, sea ice affects the movement of ocean waters. In the freezing process, much of the salt in ocean water is squeezed out of the frozen crystal formations, though some remains frozen in the ice. This salt becomes trapped beneath the sea ice, creating a higher concentration of salt in the water beneath ice floes. This concentration of salt contributes to the salinated water’s density, and this cold, denser water sinks to the bottom of the ocean. This cold water moves along the ocean floor towards the equator, while warmer water on the ocean surface moves in the direction of the poles. This is referred to as “conveyor belt motion”, and is regularly occurring process.
Read more about this topic: Sea Ice
Famous quotes containing the words relationship to, relationship, global, warming, climate and/or change:
“Whatever may be our just grievances in the southern states, it is fitting that we acknowledge that, considering their poverty and past relationship to the Negro race, they have done remarkably well for the cause of education among us. That the whole South should commit itself to the principle that the colored people have a right to be educated is an immense acquisition to the cause of popular education.”
—Fannie Barrier Williams (1855–1944)
“Artists have a double relationship towards nature: they are her master and her slave at the same time. They are her slave in so far as they must work with means of this world so as to be understood; her master in so far as they subject these means to their higher goals and make them subservient to them.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Ours is a brand—new world of allatonceness. “Time” has ceased, “space” has vanished. We now live in a global village ... a simultaneous happening.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“When cats run home and light is come,
And dew is cold upon the ground,
And the far-off stream is dumb,
And the whirring sail goes round,
And the whirring sail goes round;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“Then climate is a great impediment to idle persons; we often resolve to give up the care of the weather, but still we regard the clouds and the rain.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)