How Global Warming is Killing Our Ice Lands

By: Jala Daniels

Summary: My topic is about how global warming is affecting Antarctica and Greenland. Over the years Greenland and Antarctica have been rapidly losing their ice population. This has been happening naturally, but it has been sped up as a result of global warming.  Global warming is the release of greenhouse gases, mainly because of human activity that causes the world to become warmer.  Places that are made mostly of ice, such as Antarctica and Greenland are getting hit hard by global warming. This is a big issue because certain animals may go extinct if this issue isn’t controlled and sea levels are going to drastically rise as a result of the ice losses. Global warming is causing this issue, but the ice is melting at such a fast pace because the more ice that melts, the more of the dark sea is uncovered, and the sea actually absorbs sunlight and heat, making the surrounding ice melt even quicker. Without the snow and ice covering Greenland and Antarctica, the ice will just keep melting faster and faster.​

Why we should care? We should care about this issue because animal populations are being hit hard by the loss of ice in Greenland and Antarctica. Also, this is our planet and we should be protecting it, not harming it.

Photo Credit: https://news.uaf.edu/study-reveals-how-arctic-ocean-drives-ice-melt/

Example Article(s):
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/02/antarctic-greenland-ice-melt-less-bad

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48387030

I found these two articles interesting because they didn’t just talk about the effects that the melting ice have on the animals in Greenland and Antarctica, but it talked about how it would affect humans. I’ve heard people who don’t care about animals disregard the effect of global warming in Antarctica/Greenland because they don’t think it will affect them, but this article let’s people know that it will affect them. I also like that these articles break things down so that common people can understand. The articles are very easy to understand without being a scientist so it can possibly reach a larger audience.

Science in Action. 
Dr. Nick Golledge is an Associate Professor in the Antarctic Research Centre at the Victoria University of Wellington.

Dr. Golledge is studying how ice sheets in Antarctica react to different greenhouse gases that are released because of global warming/ climate change. I believe this is relevant to my blog because I’m writing about accelerated ice loss in Greenland and Antarctica, and his research is estimating how long it will take for Antarctica’s ice to be mostly gone if the
world continues to live the way we are now. This is also helpful because he is estimating how much the world needs to lower their greenhouse gas emissions to slow down the effects of global warming in the Antarctic.