Global Warming and Its Affects on the Arctic

"Average temperatures in the Arctic region are rising twice as fast as they are elsewhere in the world. Arctic ice is getting thinner, melting and rupturing. For example, the largest single block of ice in the Arctic, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, has been around for three thousand years before it started cracking in 2000. Within two years it had split all the way through and is now breaking into pieces" (Natural Resources Defense Council). There is no doubt that the global environment is changing, the natural world around us is being destroyed at a rapid pace and the conditions in the polar ice caps are one to be concerned with. Temperature change has made the once resistant icy terrain to begin to break apart and melt away.

The cause of this troublesome temperature change is global warming, a phenomena brought on by the overuse and burning of fossil fuels and emissions from automobiles. These pollutants, known as greenhouse gasses, work like a net to trap the sun's heat and keep it locked within the earth's environment. The arctic is especially susceptible to global warming effects due to the sheer volume of ice the arctic is partially made up of. Carin Ashjian of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution explains "(The Arctic) consists of the ice-covered Arctic Ocean and surrounding land, including all of Greenland and Spitsbergen, and the northern parts of Alaska, Canada, Norway, and Russia... Some parts of the Arctic, like Greenland, are covered with ice sheets." Global warming is, and will continue, to have a significant impact on the ecosystem of the Arctic and its surrounding neighbors. Its damaging effects can be seen not only in climate and landscape changes but also in plant, animal, and human life throughout the area.