What If We Lose The Ice In North Pole?

Surely you've heard the phrase: "the poles are melting." Well, first there is a lot to talk about here. On one hand, in the South Pole, we have an icy continent, Antarctica, which does not melt. On the other hand, at the North Pole, we have the Arctic Ocean, where a huge piece of ice is floating. Currents from around the world affect this ice particularly, because it’s not sheltered on the mainland like the ice in Antarctica. This is one of the reasons why Arctic ice changes so much. In summer part of it melts, and in winter it grows. However, in recent decades it has been observed that the amount of ice that remains unmelted, after summer is less and less. It's the heat.

These changes are not only happening in the Arctic. In most of the world, the minimum temperature in the cold zones, and the maximum temperature in the heat zones, is expected to continue to increase, especially in the north. The calcullations indicate that if we keep the 1.5 degrees of increase, we will have the North Pole almost completely melted once every one hundred years, approximately in the month of September. If we go up to 2 degrees, once every 10 years.

If you are a practical person and you don't care about all the biodiversity that is going to be lost, you may think that this is not so terrible. After all, a navigable ocean will allow more resources to be extracted and will open new trade routes. The problem is that if in this world we have an ally against climate change, that ally is precisely the North Pole. It is one of our shields against global warming, and unfortunately we are destroying it.

You see, there are several factors that make our planet warm, carbon dioxide is not the only one. You may be surprised but the main agent of the greenhouse effect on Earth is not Co2 but water vapor. There is much more water vapor than Co2 in the atmosphere. When we talk about global warming, Co2 is mentioned so much because it is the element that begins the cycle.

Think about this situation:
Humans emit a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere, it causes the temperature to rise, which makes the water in the oceans evaporate more easily. As a good greenhouse gas, this steam causes the temperature to rise even more, causing more evaporation and so on, indefinitely.
These loops, which trigger the whole thing, are known as Positive Feedbacks. Specifically, the real effect of water vapor is to double the heating.

Okey, so if a small disturbance is able to make the concentration of water vapor jump to skies and the temperature with it, how can we still live? First, because the rhythms of evolution are slow (at least at the beginning). Second, because a good part of the CO2 we emit, and the stored heat, does not remain in the atmosphere. The ocean absorbs it, which has its consequences. Third, because there are other feedbacks that slow the process. The simplest: the more water vapor in the atmosphere, the more it rains. That removes part of the steam, so it goes back to the sea. This reduces warming, but the most important feedback is Black Body Radiation.

Basic physics, if something is hot, loses energy in the form of electromagnetic waves. The Earth does this with infrared waves. In addition, the hotter the Earth is, the more energy it emits. The difference is tremendous. By radiating so many infrared waves, the planet loses energy and the temperature drops.



Tipping points

These mechanisms are not infallible. If we continue to disturb the cycles, emitting Co2, we will gradually approach points of no return, in which entire ecosystems can no longer repair themselves. These are called Tipping Points. This is precisely what brings us back to the Arctic. The snow reflects 95% of the sunlight that reaches it. That means that those rays that were meant to be absorbed by the Earth, now return to space. This defense mechanism is called albedo. The kings of albedo are the poles. If the polar ice cap continues to decrease, more and more solar rays will be absorbed by the oceans, which will increase the temperature. There will be less and less ice and more rays to be absorbed, another feedback.

At high latitudes a new risk appears, the melting of Permafrost.

Permafrost is the layer of soil that is permanently at freezing temperatures, partially formed by ice. It’s melting is not only a problem for a lot of structures built on it. The danger is that there are huge amounts of methane inside that ice.
The amount of methane stored in the world’s permafrost, including the submarine, is six times the gases we have emitted since the Industrial Revolution. In addition to that methane is a greenhouse gas twenty times more potent than Co2. So if, by melting, this gas is released, it will help to increase the temperature. That will make more methane escape, warming the planet even faster and you can already imagine how this thing continues.

The Arctic is a feedback ticking bomb. That is why it is so important that it stays as it is. If we’re able to slow down positive feedbacks, the Earth will have time to defend and cool itself. We can achieve this mainly if, surprise surprise, we stop emitting greenhouse gases.

As you can see, global warming is not a simple game between Co2 and temperatures. It is a dance that involves a lot of connected parameters in quite complex ways.