What happens to all the polar bears and penguins if all the ice melts?
When the sea ice melts you have water, which has an albedo of 0.2.
When that ice melts, huge expanses of darker, open ocean water absorb the heat instead, warming things up.
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It is thought the search for the meteorite will be delayed until the ice melts in the spring.
As temperatures rise and more ice melts, another nematode that thrives in wet soil, Eudorylaimus glacialis, is moving in.
Dr. CORELL: When the sea ice melts, it doesn't change the sea level.
As a result, it becomes harder for ice to accumulate over the years, thus accelerating ice melts even further.
"They're coming in buying shovels, ice melts and sleds, " said Atton Shipman, who works at Back Bay Hardware in Boston.
When sea ice melts, the newly exposed dark water absorbs radiation rather than reflecting it, as snow or ice would.
However, we then also get all sorts of feedback effects: ice melts, albedo changes, methane might be released, the drying of soils might kill forests.
But the great 2013 northeastern snowstorm has brought the issues of fair competition and unsavory practices to the fore, where they will remain long after the ice melts.
"When they come close to the Sun, this ice melts - solar wind blows this material out into space, so you get a tail of matter coming off the comet, " explains O'Brien.
But even if the ice melts as fast as shippers hope (and scientists fear), navigation is likely to demand strengthened hulls, higher insurance and extra training for crews, all adding to the costs.
In addition to findings of lower ice volumes in Autumn and Winter, a new paper from researchers at the University of Washington has confirmed that Arctic ice melts during the summer is also accelerating.
The question then becomes, well, what happens then: when the ice melts and albedo lowers, when warmer weather and higher CO2 increase plant growth, what happens to clouds and so on through a list of hundreds of possible feedbacks.
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What will happen when the sun finally comes out and the snow stops and the ice melts and the whole landscape is transformed into spring and stuff is blooming and farmers are running their gigantic combines up and down the long rows?
Unlike Antarctica, which is protected by an international agreement, numerous countries lay claim to parts of the Arctic, which makes it hard to pin down exactly how many tourists visit the region each summer, when the sun does not set below the horizon and the ice melts enough to allow expedition ships passage to the remote wilderness.
The ice then melts, leaving a space below the surface, which caves in under the stress of vehicles and eventually forms a pothole.
To assess the contribution from melting ice sheets, scientists try to measure "mass balance, " which is the difference between the annual snow that falls on the permanent ice sheets each year, and the total mass of ice that melts or breaks off the sheets.
One theory is that the summer sun melts ice on the surface of the glacier which creates pools of water which then flow into moulins -- narrow tubular shafts in the glacier.
Using ever fancier technologies, the oil business is drilling in deeper waters, more difficult terrain and even in the Arctic (which, as global warming melts the polar ice cap, will perversely become the next great prize in oil).
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