What would our world be like without an icecap?

Question

What would our world be like without an icecap?

Answer 1

the sea level will rise, and the lands that are build on water (e.g artificial islands) will be affected and might be fully destroyed..

Answer 2

sea levels would raise so florida would mostly be under water polar bears would be extinct it would be bad

Answer 3

First of all, [e-mail] (a.k.a the second answer) is thinking of icebergs. Icebergs are floating in water and as he said won't change the water level.

Icecaps which are above the water level will RELEASE extra FRESHWATER into the oceans. This will raise the water level and if extreme enough CAN actually CAUSE AN ICE AGE.

DEEP OCEAN CURRENTS are the movement of water underneath the oceans. These currents CARRY WARM WATER from the equator towards the poles AND COLD WATER to the equator. They depend on high density to work. 2 things effect DENSITY of the currents, HEAT and SALINITY. If way TOO MUCH FRESHWATER gets introduced into the oceans the density of these CURRENTS CHANGE, possibly enough to s***w them up and STOP that FLOW OF HEAT. This will CAUSE an ICE AGE.

If that doesn't happen then we'll have extreme global warming. Ice reflects light from the sun back into the atmosphere but water absorbs it and turns it into heat. This is why Antarctica is called the refrigerator of the Earth. If all that ice melted we would have a lot more heat being produced which means much higher global temperatures.

Answer 4

If the ice melts then the sea levels will stay the same. Try filling a glass with ice first then fill the glass up to the brim with water. When the ice melts, the water level will be the same.

Answer 5

the answer is nobody knows , natural is charactered by uncertainty and complexity , the add / chagne / remove of a factor could trigger a chain reaction, nobody knows the future

Answer 6

There would be no icecap.