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Polar ice cap A polar ice cap is a high latitude region
of a planet or natural satellite that is covered in ice. There are no requirements with respect
to size or composition for a body of ice to be termed a polar ice cap, nor any geological
requirement for it to be over land; only that it must be a body of solid phase matter in
the polar region. This causes the term "polar ice cap" to be something of a misnomer, as
the term ice cap itself is applied with greater scrutiny as such bodies must be found over
land, and possess a surface area of less than 50,000 km²: larger bodies are referred to
as ice sheets. The composition of the ice will vary. For
example Earth's polar ice caps are mainly water ice, while Mars's polar ice caps are
a mixture of solid phase carbon dioxide and water ice.
Polar ice caps form because high latitude regions receive less energy in the form of
solar radiation from the sun than equatorial regions, resulting in lower surface temperatures.
The Earth's polar ice caps have changed dramatically over the last 12,000 years. Seasonal variations
of the ice caps takes place due to varied solar energy absorption as the planet or moon
revolves around the sun. Additionally, in geologic time scales, the ice caps may grow
or shrink due to climate variation. Earth
North Pole Earth's north pole is covered by floating
pack ice (sea ice) over the Arctic Ocean. Portions of the ice that do not melt seasonally
can get very thick, up to 3–4 meters thick over large areas, with ridges up to 20 meters
thick. One-year ice is usually about 1 meter thick. The area covered by sea ice ranges
between 9 and 12 million km². In addition, the Greenland ice sheet covers about 1.71
million km² and contains about 2.6 million km³ of ice. When the ice melts it forms little
parts of floating ice scattered around the north and south poles.
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, "since 1979, winter Arctic ice extent
has decreased about 4.2 percent per decade". Both 2008 and 2009 had a minimum Arctic sea
ice extent somewhat above that of 2007. At other times of the year the ice extent is
still sometimes near the 1979–2000 average, as in April 2010, by the data from the National
Snow and Ice Data Center. South Pole
The land mass of the Earth's south pole, in Antarctica, is covered by the Antarctic ice
sheet. It covers an area of about 14.6million km² and contains 25–30 million km³ of
ice. Around 70% of the fresh water on the Earth is held in this ice sheet. See Climate
of Antarctica. Data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center
shows that the sea ice coverage of Antarctica has a slightly positive trend over the last
three decades (1979–2009). Historical cases
Over the past several decades Earth’s polar ice caps have gained a significant amount
of attention due to their alarming decrease in land and sea ice. NASA reports that sea
ice in the Arctic has been declining at a rate of nine percent per decade for the past
30 years, while Antarctica has been losing land ice mass at a rate of more than 100 cubic
kilometers per year since 2002. Due to polar ice caps current rate of decline,
there have been many investigations and discoveries on glacier dynamics and their influence on
the world’s climate. In the early 1950s, scientists and engineers from the US Army
began drilling into polar ice caps for geological insight. These studies resulted in “nearly
forty years of research experience and achievements in deep polar ice core drillings… and established
the fundamental drilling technology for retrieving deep ice cores for climatologic archives.”
Polar ice caps have been used to not only track current climate patterns, but also patterns
over the past several thousands years due to traces of CO2 and CH4 found trapped in
the ice. In the past decade, polar ice caps have shown their most rapid decline in size
with no true sign of recovery. Josefino Comiso, a senior research scientist at NASA, found
that the “rate of warming in the Arctic over the last 20 years is eight times the
rate of warming over the last 100 years.” In September 2012, sea ice reached its smallest
size ever. Journalist John Vidal stated that sea ice is "700,000 sq km below the previous
minimum of 4.17m sq km set in 2007". In August 2013, Arctic sea ice extent averaged 6.09m
km2, which represents 1.13 million km2 below the 1981-2010 average for that month.
Mars In addition to Earth, the planet Mars also
has polar ice caps. They consist of primarily water-ice with a few percent dust. Frozen
carbon dioxide makes up a small permanent portion of the Planum Australe or the South
Polar Layered Deposits. In both hemispheres a seasonal carbon dioxide frost deposits in
the winter and sublimes during the spring. Data collected in 2005 from NASA missions
to Mars show that the southern residual ice cap undergoes sublimation inter-annually.
The most widely accepted explanation is that fluctuations in the planet's orbit are causing
the changes.