A Melting Planet Essay

A glacier is a large mass of ice that flows very slowly. A glacier forms by the compression and/or crystallization of snow that has stayed in one place year round. Glaciers can be constructive and/or destructive. Glaciers can be constructive by leaving sediments behind, or destructive by gauging the earth's surface. Glaciers were once present in Minnesota, thousands of years ago, and as they retreated, they left behind large amounts of glacial meltwater and various landforms, still present today.

Ehrlich says, “The retreat and disappearance of glaciers-means we’re burning libraries and damaging the planet…” (89). The author includes this deep thought burning quote to the reader to explain that there is a problem with the loss of all this environmental information these ice masses hold. Ehrlich makes this inference to repulse and further engage the reader into this natural disaster. Then follows step by step the effects melted glaciers would have upon the Earth. She starts with the Albedo effect, continues to the loss of ice and snow, and finishes with, “our sources of fresh water will disappear” (90). This addresses the effects aspect, but also appeals to audience, due to the fact that humans cannot live without freshwater. The author uses the human items of an air conditioner and sponge to dramatize the consequences of contraction glaciers.

Remote sensing has become a very valuable tool for documenting the response of glacier to changing climate (Bamber and Kwok, 2003; Kuhn, 2007; Pellikka, 2007; Solomon et al, 2007) because the rugged terrain, inaccessibility and legendary poor weather of glacier areas has resulted in relatively few field- based studies. Indeed, in order to use glaciers and their changes as indicators of climate change, or as an early warning signal for sea level rise, remote sensing is the only tool to provide glacier change information from all the continents and from a large number of glaciers and ice sheets. On the other hands, because space borne and airborne remote sensing data provide superior cost- effective and area effective data and methods for monitoring the glaciers and their changes, part of this monitoring can be carried out by it.

A glacier is a large body of ice that moves slowly across land and are formed by there being a higher snow gain rather than a snow melt. Glaciers move by a small amount of ice melting and the glacier sliding. Glaciers can help and destroy the landscape in front of them but they can also shape the land into something amazing. Glaciers were once present in Minnesota thousands of years ago and played a massive role on the landscape we live on today, and as they melted they left behind large amounts of water and formations.

A glacier occurs when the climate of an area is so cold that new snow does not completely melt each summer and more snow is added in the winter. After many winters the accumulation of this snow becomes compact and re-crystallizes, thus forming a glacier. Currently, glaciers cover about ten percent of the Earth's surface. Yet, in the past, glaciers covered much more land and were thousands of meters thick. (Tierney)

When the Ice Age began, the Rocky Mountain National Park area saw large ice sheets covering much of the land. There had been proof of earlier glaciation in the Rocky Mountain area because a mass of older rocks and sediments called moraines had been deposited by a glacier and found on the edges and extremities of the mountains there. Unfortunately, a large majority of the evidence has been erased by the more recent glaciation in the Ice Age.

However, the glacier is gradually melting. The Columbia Glacier in Prince William Sound, the world's fastest-melting glacier, slides into the ocean at a rate of 80 feet per day. This tidewater glacier is up to 3,000 feet thick, but it has thinned up to 1,300 feet in places during

Whether it’s useful or useless. Because some day it will be gone forever and we will confront the problems of losing it. The evidences to support the author’s opinion is “ Snow and ice are the Earth’s built-in air conditioner-crucial to the health of the planet. Without winter’s white mantle, Earth will become a heat sponge. As heat escalates, all our sources of fresh water will disappear”. The quote explains the important role of glacier to keep the earth cool down, and deflect the heat from the sun,

Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist, studied a glacier on Mount Baker, in Washington State. The glaciers are melting, as the planet becomes warmer. “At the rate it is losing mass, it won’t make it 50 years,” said Pelto. Glaciers from Mount Baker and the North Cascades are getting smaller. Over the past thirty years, seven glaciers have melted. An estimate was made that the 116 glaciers that they studied in Alaska have lost a total of 75 billion metric tons of ice. There were 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park in 1850. Now, there are only 25."They are losing volume at a faster rate than ever before," Pelto said. "If you cannot sustain a glacier at a place like this in the Lower 48 states, there is no hope."

Climate change is causing glaciers to melt. In the video it says “when the ocean gets warmer it swells on top of that glaciers and ice sheets are melting”. This is important because it shows glaciers are melting because the ocean is too warm. This

Glaciers have helped define the topography of earth for many years. A glacier is a large mass of ice that has been compacted of snow and ice for a long period of time. The ice age we will be focusing on is the Pleistocene era, which was “a period that began about 2.5 million years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago” (513). This was the most recent ice age where it helped formed our present-day lands. During this time, ice covered about 19 million square miles which was about 1/3 of earth’s land surface (515). Many parts of all the continents were covered with ice and that had a great effect on our topography due to the glaciers it created.

Even though some of the links could not found, I still learned some cool and disturbing facts about glaciers. For example, ice bergs are nicknamed "rivers of ice" because they constantly move like rivers but at a much slower pace. Also if the ice bergs keep melting at the rate that they are, sea levels will rise and cause major damage and cause natural disasters like, flooding. Also the freshwater that's stored within the ice bergs would mix into the saltwater and led to a very limited availability of freshwater. Global warming is a major factor in the melting of the ice bergs and it's up to man to get this problem under

Glacial erosion occurs when the water below the surface of the glacial melts, making the glacial crack. There are two main process in this, the first one is plucking,which means that when the glacial breaks down, converting this way in little pieces, and then get picked up by other moving glaciers. It takes over one hundred of years to a solid glacier to form, and for it to melt depends on the climate where is located. Glacier National Park, which is located in the State of Montana, has mountains which began forming from ice erosion over 130 million years ago.

Glaciers are one of the most fundamental phenomenon on the planet, and much of their purpose and impact on earth has been well documented and published. Ice sheets, Ice Caps and Glaciers trap nearly 90% of the world's fresh water, and are replenished by snowfall each year. Their existence on this planet dates back 650,000,000 years and yet they are always moving, always shifting and always melting. Before, human existence and even during the brief era of humans, ice dominated all of the earth's landmass and have regulated, created and altered many of the landscapes around the world.

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