What will happen If Antartica and the North Pole melt?

Question

And by what will happen I mean, I mean to them. I know the sea levels would rise, yadah, yadah. But will Antarctica and the North pole disappear, would new land be found underneath all of that ice? Will their climate change? Or Lets say it melts but not all of it.

Answer 1

The North Pole is situated in the Arctic ocean, there isn't any land right at the pole.
The South Pole is in the middle (sort of) of Antarctica, and under the ice is actual land like Australia or any other large land mass.

So if the ice at both poles melt:
- neither "pole" will disappear, the poles are the geographic location of the axis of the turning earth
- Antarctica is land, so it will be an new continent (however, the shoreline will not be what it is today since the oceans will be higher and more of the land will be under water). In fact, there are places on Antarctica right now that are free of ice and snow all year round.
- their climates will change the way the rest of the world's climate will change - warmer, more rain all year, less snow in winter, etc.
- Antarctica could end up with some plant life and become more like a tundra (scrub plants, mosses and lichens)

Answer 2

The Arctic ice floats on sea water, there is no land, so if it melted the sea level rise would be nil. The Antarctic ice is 7000ft thick and gets to minus 35 decrees C in summer. If the ice on Greenland melted the sea level rise would be around six to twenty inches. A temperaure rise of a lot more than the actual 0.69 degrees C over the last 150 years would be needed to cause these places to thaw out.

Answer 3

well the yadah yadah yadah is what you have to worry about.. there is a land mass under antarctica, north pole is just an ice cap... so .. watch that new al gore movie to have a better perspective on ice age..

Answer 4

well this is very involved. in the polar ice caps there is permafrost which is like a methaine which is harder to get rid of then CO2, when this happens the global warming will happen faster then the earth's cycle resulting in more radical weather patterns causing extremely violent storms, draut, higher more violent oceans. a good article to read is from New York Magazine written by Elizabeth Kolbert she will give you indepth fact about this top to bottom.


Kolbert, Elizabeth. "The New Yorker Fact." The Climate of Man--I.
18 Apr 2005. New Yorker Magazine. 11 Apr 2007 http:/
/www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/04/25/050425fa_fact3

Answer 5

Scientists have drilled down. The Arctic is just ice on top of the ocean. Under the ice in Antarctica is land.

Answer 6

The land mass that is antartica will be exposed and we can see how big it really is. There appears to be no land mass in the Northern area, so it could just be open sea

Answer 7

nothing. only you have to evolve to water as habitat.