Why melting ice sheets and glaciers are affecting people thousands of miles away : NPR

Jul 29, 2023

By

A Martínez

,

Lauren Sommer

,

Rebecca Hersher

The world's massive ice sheets and glaciers are melting as climate change raises temperatures. Scientists warn that disappearing ice is having surprising and far-reaching effects.

Take a quiz online to see if you can guess those distant impacts. Or check out the other stories in the NPR Climate Desk series Beyond the Poles: The far-reaching dangers of melting ice.

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

All right. Now a story about ice.

(SOUNDBITE OF WATER FLOWING)

MARTÍNEZ: That is the sound of summertime in Greenland, where ice is rapidly melting. As the climate gets hotter, the world's ice sheets and glaciers are disappearing. And surprisingly, that's affecting people thousands of miles away. All this week, NPR's Climate Desk is looking at those effects. And reporters Lauren Sommer and Rebecca Hersher are here with us now with more.

So thousands of miles away - Lauren, that sounds like it is not believable, that it's not possible. Explain that.

LAUREN SOMMER, BYLINE: Yeah, I mean, ice can feel really far away, right? It's at the very ends of the planet. But ice is deeply connected to the rest of the world because it influences fundamental things like weather patterns and oceans. Those are connections that travel a really long way. And the reason for that is because these are vast amounts of ice we're talking about. They're just really huge parts of the planet. And I went to see some of it with NPR producer Ryan Kellman, and we hiked up Greenland's ice sheet.

(SOUNDBITE OF ICE CRUNCHING)

SOMMER: And it really is like climbing a mountain. It's three times the size of Texas. And the melt is really striking. You know, some of the ice was covered in these little pools of water, kind of look like Swiss cheese. Other parts just had big, rushing rivers of meltwater.

(SOUNDBITE OF WATER RUSHING)

SOMMER: Greenland is losing about 280 billion tons of ice a year. And researchers are trying to figure out just how much more that melt is going to accelerate.

MARTÍNEZ: Rebecca, why is it so hard to figure that out?

REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE: You know, these are really, really massive areas, so they don't melt the way, like, an ice cube would, you know, gently liquefying in the sun. These are dynamic, complex places. They are the size of entire states. And all kinds of things influence them. You know, dust and algae and snow all affect how ice absorbs the heat from the sun. Also, the ice is cracking as it melts. So one scientist who studies Antarctica explained it like this to me. It's like a windshield. So, you know, like, a little pebble hits your windshield. It makes a tiny crack. It might stay tiny for months. And then for no discernible reason, boom, it turns into a really big crack. And in the case of ice, a big chunk can fall into the ocean.

SOMMER: And melting actually creates more melting. The meltwater itself speeds up the whole process. So predicting exactly how quickly these massive ice sheets and glaciers will disappear as Earth is heating up - it's really hard but, you know, really important.

MARTÍNEZ: Rebecca, tell us about some of the unexpected connections between this melting ice and people's just everyday lives.

HERSHER: Yeah. So let's start with sea level rise. So that's one of the major threats from climate change. And, obviously, melting ice contributes to sea level rise around the world. But here's something a lot of people don't know. The ocean is not like a bathtub where, like, melting ice is the faucet, and the water rises uniformly everywhere. The ocean has currents. It has topography. It's super complicated. And so there are special relationships between specific places and specific ice that's melting. For example, the melting ice in west Antarctica will disproportionately affect sea level rise in Texas.

SOMMER: You know, some of the other connections to ice are less obvious, maybe. Like, sea ice in the Arctic can actually affect the weather we see in the U.S.

MARTÍNEZ: Lauren, why is that?

SOMMER: So ice is really bright white, right? It's kind of blinding. And in the Arctic, it reflects a lot of sunlight. The sea ice is shrinking, though. And without it, more sunlight is warming the ocean. And scientists are finding that heat seems to be influencing weather patterns that ripple all the way down to the lower 48. And it could mean more hot, dry weather in the Western U.S. during wildfire season. Melting ice also means a lot of freshwater is pouring into the oceans where it can change the ocean currents in a way that harms entire ecosystems of animals.

MARTÍNEZ: So all this sounds really, really dire. Rebecca, what does the future hold? I mean, is there any way at all to avoid some of these effects?

HERSHER: You know, to be honest, some of these changes cannot be avoided. For example, some amount of sea level rise is going to happen in the next few decades, no matter how quickly greenhouse gas emissions fall. So we'll need to adapt our homes and our cities to deal with that no matter what. But if you look just a little bit further into the future, it's a totally different story. The decisions that we collectively make right now about greenhouse gas emissions - they do have profound effects later this century.

SOMMER: Yeah. And actually, Twila Moon, who is deputy lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center - she talked to us about that.

TWILA MOON: We are 110% not too late. If we take strong action to reduce climate change and to rein in greenhouse gases, we can preserve the vast majority. We will see retreat. But most of that ice we could expect to continue to be there for thousands of years.

SOMMER: You know, Twila, like a lot of scientists we spoke to, really emphasized just how drastic the changes they've seen firsthand are and that the planet we know today - it looks the way it does because of ice. Our coastlines and our weather are all shaped by that frozen water. It's why scientists, you know, are working to understand all these complicated connections as they're changing because the stakes are incredibly high.

MARTÍNEZ: That's Lauren Sommer and Rebecca Hersher from NPR's Climate Desk. Their stories on the far-reaching effects of ice air all this week. And you can catch the next story later today on All Things Considered.

Lauren, Rebecca, thanks.

HERSHER: Thanks.

SOMMER: Thank you.

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