THE CONSEQUENCES ARE PLAIN TO SEE THIS YEAR 2050 SIX CATEGORY-5 HURRICANES BATTERED THE CARIBBEAN AND THE SOUTHERN STATES OF THE UNITED STATES MANY ISLANDS IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN AND THE INDIAN OCEAN HAVE ALREADY DISAPPEARED BENEATH THE WAVES SEVERE STORMS HAVE CAUSED FLOODS IN BANGLADESH BURMA AND AUSTRALIA What Happens when an ICE CAP Melts Angela Royston
4 More of the ice that covers the Arctic Ocean in winter is now melting in summer This photograph was taken in August 2012 The orange line shows how much more ice there was at the end of summer in 2005 Meltdown The Arctic and Antarctic are so cold that masses of thick ice called ice caps cover the sea and the land all year round People used to take the ice caps for granted but now they are beginning to melt This book looks at what will happen as each ice cap disappears This will affect the whole Earth and people everywhere 4 Ice caps shrink in spring and summer as some of the ice melts but they refreeze in winter For thousands of years the overall size of the ice caps has remained much the same However since 2000 things have begun to change dramatically When do ice caps melt the most
Very high mountains such as Mount Cook in New Zealand remain covered by snow all year round even in summer Now these mountain ice caps are shrinking too Nearly 70 percent of the world’s freshwater is held in land ice If all of it melted the level of the oceans would rise by a staggering 230 feet 70 m swamping coastlines The Antarctic ice cap is the biggest in the world It consists of frozen freshwater and covers nearly 8 7 million square miles 14 million sq km It is up to 2 5 miles 4 km thick Almost the whole of the island of Greenland is covered with land ice up to 2 miles 3 km thick The ice cap that covers the Arctic Ocean consists of frozen seawater This sea ice covers between 5 6 and 7 5 million square miles 9 and 12 million sq km and is up to 13 feet 4 m thick Is it true Many people did not believe scientists when they first said that the Earth is getting warmer and that the ice caps would melt Today measurements show that more and more ice is melting each summer Worse still it is melting faster than the scientists predicted 5 Number Crunching
