If a (nuclear) bomb or meteorite hit Antarctica, would it melt the ice and flood the coasts of the world?

Question

Could you give some Internet addresses that could go into further detail to support your answer? Thanks.

Answer 1

In the case of the meteorite, it completely depends on the size, but even a large one would vaporize more ice than it would melt, so I would expect the sea level to rise only slightly.

Answer 2

We would probably die from the dust clouds and tsunamis well before the Ice would melt in the event that a meteorite hit. Scientists recently discovered a 300 mile crater in Antarctica that once wiped out the majority of life on Earth, well before the Yucatan Peninsula strike that killed the Dinosaurs.

Answer 3

A nuclear weapon, no. The 'biggest' warheads ever fielded would each yield thousands of times less energy than needed to melt a significant amount of the ice-cap.

As for impact events, very large impacts, such as the one which occured at the K-T boundary would certainly liberate enough energy to melt a significant amount of the ice cap - but what fraction of that would actually go into melting ice?

It would certainly vaporize many cubic kilometers of ice and rock, generating an incandescent plume of water vapor and other substances, but that process, along with the shock-wave that the impact would send into the planet itself, would likely account for much of the impact energy.

I would not expect much of the ice affected to simply melt.

The water vapor deposited in the troposphere would eventually fall as precipitation.

Short answer? Probably not.

Answer 4

No. An atomic bomb is like an itch on your back. It's so small compared to the continent. A meteorite also most likely wouldn't melt the whole continent on impact, and you'd need to worry about the amount of dust kicked into the atmosphere.

Answer 5

Chocolate Ice Cream

Answer 6

Yes, but its not just the coasts which shall be affected, destruction of Antarctica will mean havoc for the entire planet.

Answer 7

Big enough explosion to melt the ice (or anyway lots of the ice) would also set fire to the atmosphere. Bye bye to us all. The tidal waves would just put out the fires.

Answer 8

If it hit Artica it might, but i doubt that it would flood the coast... like how many nuclear bombs would you need to do that?

Answer 9

yeah itd be like the day after tomorow

Answer 10

Yes. But let's just pray it doesn't happen.