why dosent the north and south pole melt if the earths eliptical orbit is tilted?

Question

wouldnt the suns rays hit the pole when the orbit is either lower hor higher, since they go in the same general direction for my knowing

- their probalby is a logical answer but im 14 and my teacher tried to answer this but said it was more complicated than he could explain to us

Answer 1

The earth stays the same distance from the sun year round except for an insignificant and negligible amount. What causes summer and winter is the directness of the sun's rays. In our summers, the sun shines more directly on the northern hemisphere. That's why the southern hemisphere has winter and vice-versa. The sun never shines directly on the poles but when the sun shines on the southern hemisphere more directly, ice around antarctica does melt more and when the sun shines more directly on the northern hemisphere, more ice melts at the arctic circle. But the earth rotates around the sun in 365 days and thus, neither hemisphere stays in the suns direct rays long enough.

Answer 2

Well, two things. One, the tilt of the Earth is actually staying stable because of the gravitation of the moon believe it or not. Ever so slowly, the moon moves farther away, and ever so slowly our tilt changes. Will never happen in our lifetime, but someday we will have no moon. As for the polar ice caps melting, that would most likely not affect the tilt because the mass of the earth is still the same, just redistributed. In my opinion, the earth has a bulge around the equator thanks to the spinning of the earth... well, if all that water comes, the earth will just have more land covered and that water will just spin out some more at our equator...

Answer 3

It's easier to think of it as the Earth's axis being tilted relative to the plane of its orbit. If there were no tilt, from the poles you would always see the sun right on the horizon. Because of the tilt, the sun is above the horizon 24 hours a day from the spring equinox to the fall equinox, though it reaches a maximum of only 23° above the horizon at midsummer. The other half of the year, it stays below the horizon and is not seen at all.

This combination of no sun at all for half the year, and very low-angle sunlight the rest of the time makes the poles cold all the time.

Answer 4

If one pole or the other was tilted towards the sun all the time, they would melt. Since each pole takes it's turn angled at the sun it cycles from warmer to colder with winter and summer seasons every year. Also, due to the angle of the sun at the poles even in the middle of summer, it never gets really hot and thus takes months to melt the ice. The North pole is actually melting during the summer since it is at sea level. The South pole would take many, many years to melt since it is basically on a 10,000 foot high plateau.

Answer 5

the earth gets warm because as you know, the suns rays heat the earth. the North and South Poles do not get hit by the suns direct rays, because the farthest the suns rays hit up north is at 23.5 degreees north, aka the Tropic of Cancer, and the farthest the suns direct rays hit south is 23.5 degrees south, the tropic od Capricorn. the Arctic and and Anarctic Circles start at 66.5 degrees N/S. So the rays barely hit it since it above/undeneath the earth. Also, the atmosphere surrounding the North and South pole is very thick, so the sun rays have a hard time getting through, and the ones that do are scattered.

Answer 6

In the summer of both hemispheres, the sea ice around the polar regions changes dramatically - I recall that the difference around Antarctica is equivalent to an area of ice the size of the USA.

So, the ice does melt in summer, and if summer was longer the sea ice would probably all disappear.

The ice caps are a different matter. On Greenland and Antarctica, the ice caps are up to several miles thick, so the summer does not make much inroads into melting them.

Also, note that the Earth's axis is tilted compared with its path around the sun, and not the orbit tilted.

Answer 7

The tilt of the earth's axis is only 23 degrees(and a fraction) off straight up relative to the sun. Therefore, the poles still have a great deal of the sun's energy deflected away from them. If the tilt was closer to 90 degrees, then there would be more energy getting through the atmosphere.

Answer 8

the north and south pole dont melt because they aren't absorbing that much heat energy
there is more energy being absorbed at the equator beacuse the tilt of the earth causes the equator to be at a right angle.

Answer 9

I'm 13, and my teacher didn't tell us that, but said that when the earth tilts in a billion years or whatever, then the whole world will flood.