Why is it the freezing of water is important to the environment? Please answer this question.. 10 points..?

Question

urgent.... pls.. tnx... promise 10 points..

Answer 1

Even small changes in ice volume could have a significant impact on global climate, ocean circulation patterns, and polar animal habitats; such a dramatic change in ice volume would likely have an even more dramatic impact on the planet.

Sea ice helps regulate climate because it acts like a mirror, deflecting incoming solar energy and helping to balance the Earth’s temperatures. As the sea ice disappears, dark ocean water is exposed to the sun’s energy, and the Arctic’s ability to cool our planet also disappears.

http://www.teachersdomain.org/resources/...

http://nsidc.org/news/press/20060706_gor...

Answer 2

When water freezes, its volume increases. The ice is lighter than liquid water, and so ice floats on top, preventing the water below from freezing. So the whole body of water in the lake will not freeze up, and the organims in the water will survive the winter.

Answer 3

assuming your talking about the polar ice ,if it continues to melt we will have no land left due to rising sea

Answer 4

i don't know if my answer is right but this is what i think. global warming.

Answer 5

Water is one of the most unique substances in existence - particularly because of its impact on life and the environment.

One of the things that makes so special is that water behaves differently than most other known compounds (both organic & inorganic) when it freezes. All other compounds become smaller and more dense when they freeze, but water actually becomes larger and less dense when it freezes! This has a LOT of important implications, which I will explain at the very end.

In liquid water, the H2O molecules are constantly and randomly moving - bouncing, colliding, and interacting with other water molecules. But when the temperature of water drops to below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, the water molecules rate of random motion drastically, drastically drops. ( For reference, the actual definition of Temperature is the average rate of random kinetic motion within a substance)

Now, because a molecule of water is so small (as compared to most other molecules) and because of the presence of hydrogen atoms in its structure, there is a tendency of the oxygen atoms to pull on the hydrogen atoms of Other water molecules. (This is due to a positive / negative attraction called "hydrogen bonding" - hydrogen acts as the positive and oxygen acts as the negative). This phenomena occurs not only on one molecule of water, but the entire mass of it, causing all of the molecules in the mass of water to "line up" with each other - forming a crystalline lattice.

This lattice is so strong and fixed in spatial arrangement that the liquid water, which was denser and had more motion, turns into a solid, hard but less dense piece of stationary water molecules collectively bound together by hydrogen bonding - something commonly referred to as "ice".

Most other known compounds freeze from the bottom up, but because of this special case detailed above, water actually freezes from the top down.******** To answer your question - in millions of the world's lakes and certain oceans, ice forms on the surface of the water during winter. This layer of ice "Insulates" the water (and the marine life in it!) from whatever chilling and freezing conditions exist on top. BECAUSE OF THIS, THE TEMPERATURE OF WATER BELOW THE ICE NEVER DROPS BELOW 32 DEGREES FARENHEIT UNTIL THE WHOLE LAKE OR OCEAN MASS TURNS INTO ONE GIANT ICECUBE.

THIS LETS MARINE LIFE ALL OVER THE WORLD SURVIVE DURING THE WINTER - even when surface temperatures might be  -10 degrees Farhrenheit above the ice, the water temperature below the ice will NEVER drop as hard or as fast as what the surface temperature does.

***If this did not happen - millions upon millions of marine life forms would die during the winter and millions upon millions of humans and other animals would die from starvation as a secondary effect.***

Answer 6

regulates temperature