Two polar ice caps in the Canadian Arctic region have disappeared due to global warming and climate change, according to satellite images from NASA, fulfilling a bleak 2017 prediction.
Polar Ice Caps Gone in Just Half a Decade
As seen from 2015 satellite images, they have shrunk to just 5 percent of their previous size, as recorded in 1959. But this year, images from the NASA satellites show how these ice caps are now gone. The satellite images in 2015 and 2020 show a frightening scenario where the ice caps have melted in only five years.
These Arctic ice caps vanished because of anthropogenic global warming.
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Predictive 2017 Study
Since the 1980's, National Snow and Ice Data Center director Mark Serreze have studied the Canadian St. Patrick Bay polar ice caps. His study was published in 2017.
In it, he said that if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, then these ice caps will be gone in five years. It turned out his prediction was spot on. Serreze said when he had first been to the ice caps, they appeared to be a permanent part of the Arctic landscape. It blew him away to see them disappear in less than four decades.
His study was published in the journal The Cryosphere. It compared images taken by satellites in 2015 with historical images that date back to the year 1959. The comparisons revealed how the ice caps melted to just 5 percent of their original size only 60 years before. Images taken by the ASTER Satellite Sensor of the same area last July 14, 2020, showed that the ice caps are now completely gone.
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Implications of the Melting Ice Caps
The disappearance of the ice caps is shocking visual evidence of global warming that now threatens us. Scientists have been regularly reporting record increases in temperatures worldwide, showing proof of the very real climate change that is slowly heating up our planet.
The warming Earth is causing famine, extreme weather events, and drought in many parts of the world. It is also causing an alarming rise in sea levels.
Two polar ice caps in the Canadian Arctic region have disappeared due to global warming and climate change, according to satellite images from NASA, which fulfills a bleak 2017 prediction.
A study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports revealed that coastal flooding would rise by about 50 percent all over the world in the coming 80 years. Researchers from Australia and the UK created scenarios of climate change where the concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide continue to rise rapidly.
Their results showed that the melting of the ice caps would result in associated flooding that will endanger the lives of millions and cause economic damages of over 10 trillion pounds. Out of the land that is experiencing extreme flooding today, an increase of over 96,500 square miles worldwide is expected to occur. This is an increase of 48 percent. This will result in roughly 77 million additional people being at risk of flooding.
Serreze says that they have long known how climate change will have more pronounced effects in the Arctic. The deaths of the two polar ice caps, which he knew so well, made it personal. He says that all he has left of them now are memories and photographs.
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