Sea level is continuously rising. It has gone up by 20cm since 1850. It might not seem like a lot, but experts warned in 2019 that if the ice sheet of West Antarctic would collapse, North America and Europe would have a more than 30% increase in sea level. Just think of the impact of an ice meltdown on global scale.
There are more than five million cubic miles of ice on Earth and out of it, Greenland and Antarctica contain 99% of the freshwater ice. But this ice is melting into the ocean due to rising global temperatures. Normally, it would take more than 5,000 years to melt away the entire planet’s ice. But what would happen if something caused it to melt overnight? How would it impact life on earth? Can we survive? In order to find out answers to our question, lets dive deep into this topic and explore the possibilities.
If the entire planet’s ice melted overnight, then the average sea levels would rise by almost 70 meters overnight. All the coastal cities like New York, Mumbai, Shanghai, Venice, London and others would drown in the flash flood caused by risen see level. More than 40% of the world's population would drown or become homeless.
If you think everything will go to normal just by relocating this 40% population to a higher region, you are taking this extinction level event lightly. Because while we would be trying to deal with the chaos aboveground, much more disastrous activities would be happening underground. Due to increase in sea level, the saltwater of see would infiltrate our groundwater reserves farther inland, forcing these water reserves to turn salty and acidic. These reserves are the main source for our drinking water, irrigation systems, and power-plant cooling systems. And as we would lose our main source of freshwater reserves, not only the population of the coastal cities but also the population far away from coastal area would suffer. Humans and animals would die of dehydration. Plants and vegetation would die due to non-availability of freshwater for irrigation. This would impact food supply and cause global hunger. Also, the power plants would have to be shut down due to non-availability of fresh water for their cooling systems. This would impact electricity supply forcing blackouts in cities dependent on electricity supply from power plant.
But we haven't explored the worst outcome yet. As we just explored what would happen if 99% of all the freshwater ice on Earth melted. We are yet to find out the consequences of the meltdown of remaining ice. Most of this 1% of freshwater ice is sitting in the Himalayan and other mountain glaciers. These glaciers have trapped toxic chemicals like DDT beneath its layers of ice. According to scientists, such glaciers can store harmful chemicals for decades and if they thaw, those harmful chemicals will get released into rivers, lakes and other freshwater reserves. So, most of the remaining freshwater reserves which were not destroyed by risen sea level will get destroyed by chemical mixed water released from mountain glaciers.
Meltdown of all the ice on Earth would also release greenhouse gases which were trapped inside the ice sheets for thousands of years. According to scientists estimate this could almost double the current levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and result in increase in global temperatures by 3.5 degrees Celsius.
That's not it. As the ice in Greenland and Antarctica is made of freshwater, its meltdown will change the composition of ocean water as it would go straight into the oceans. This would impact ocean currents and weather patterns. Ocean currents act as means of transport for the warm and cold water, sending heat toward the earth's poles and helping tropical areas cool off, thus influencing both weather and climate. But the addition of freshwater in ocean would dilute the current and could weaken or even stop it altogether. This would result in next stage of extinction because without that warm air, temperatures in northern Europe would go down and if we believe some experts, it could result in an ice age northern European region. Ans on the other side of the world, we would lose our rivers and lakes as they would evaporate due to higher temperatures. It would cause mass droughts and desert-like situation. And the evaporated water vapor mixed in atmosphere would work as a fuel for storms and we would witness disasters such as more frequent and stronger storms, hurricanes floods, heavy rainfall and increased temperatures, causing disruption in ecosystems around the world.
In short, melting all the ice on Earth would not only affect the coastal cities but cause chaos at global level. Several species will go extinct, and the remaining will find it hard to survive. In order to avoid this future, we need to take action now and hope that this future remain in our imaginations only and not become reality due to our mistakes.
So, this is what would happen if the entire planet’s ice melted. What do you think? Please share your thoughts in comment section.
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