danger of ice famine

Pramod Bhargava

There are many ill effects of climate change. One of these is the melting of ice due to rising temperatures in the North and South pole regions. Extreme heat or cold weather is also believed to be the reason for this. This concern of scientists increased when the information about the melting of a glacier of a size larger than France floating in Antarctica turned out to be more than estimates.

Climate change is slowly bringing big changes in the world. Its effect is also clearly visible at the local level in many areas of the world including America. Recently, a major impact of this has been seen in the western US, indicating future ice famine in America. This research has been published in the science journal Nature with the title ‘Reviews Earth and Environment’. According to research, there may be a crisis of snow availability in states like California in the western US. Due to this, the incidents of fire in the trees and plants, animals and birds, rivers and ponds and forests can increase rapidly. Researchers claim that if the emissions of fossil fuels are not stopped, the ice on some mountain ranges could decrease by up to forty-five percent by 2050. Snowy weather will either last for very few days or will remain without snow. Snow is also rapidly eroding in some Himalayan regions of India.

Worrying changes are visible in the western regions of America. According to the research, more than seventy percent of local water managers in the Sierra believe that the water-management policies followed in the western US are not suitable for future climate change. As a result, snow in the Sierra-Naveda of the western United States meets 30 percent of California’s water demand. But now the state is witnessing several periods of snow famine. In the spring of 2021, Sierra got only sixty-nine percent of the icy water. The scorching heat in the month of May worked to convert ten percent of the ice into vapor. In June all the ice melted and turned into water and washed away. These are clear signs of an ice famine. The lead researcher of this study Alan Rhodes and his colleagues conducted a time-bound study of the decrease and increase in the amount of snow in the western states of America.

The study revealed that all regions of the Americas will see rapid erosion of ice caps by the year 2050, which could turn the region into an ice famine. In fact, moist winds from the warm Pacific Ocean from ranges such as the Sierra, Nevada and Cascades of this region, which act to rapidly melt the ice of the California mountain ranges. If global carbon emissions are not controlled to a large extent, the erosion of these icebergs will be visible regularly after thirty-five to sixty years. This study shows how rising global temperatures are affecting local climates. This situation can become a catastrophic cause of water crisis for a large part of the population in future. Therefore, if the conversion of fuel and energy sources is not done properly, the ice famine will continue to expand.

There are many ill effects of climate change. One of these is the melting of ice due to rising temperatures in the North and South pole regions. Extreme heat or cold weather is also believed to be the reason for this. This concern of scientists increased when the information about the melting of a glacier of a size larger than France floating in Antarctica turned out to be more than estimates. That is, this giant glacier is melting much faster than what was estimated so far.

It is also feared that the sea level will rise due to this. The US National Snow and Ice Center, a study conducted by Paul Binberry of the University of Central Washington, has claimed that the snow on the North Pole has melted from an area of ​​32.90 lakh square kilometers. This area is nine thousand eight hundred and sixty three kilometers away from India. University of Maryland geophysicist Daniel Lathrop says that the reason for this is the movement in the outer layer of the Earth. At the core of the Earth is a hot liquid ocean of iron and nickel metals, and this movement produces an electric field. However, the exact reason for the rapid shifting of the magnetic pole is not yet known by geologists.

However, a Canadian scientist, James Clark Rass, gave similar information for the first time in 1830. It has also been known from another study that in the year 2000, the North Pole of the Earth has shifted its direction towards Greenwich Meridian (London). It is estimated that this change has been caused by changes in the distribution of water on Earth and melting of polar ice. It is believed to be the cause of climate change. In the twentieth century, the North Pole, the longitude line connecting Toronto and Panama City, is moving towards Canada’s Hudson Bay. The reason for this change was that there was a redistribution of mass in the Earth’s crust after the last ice age. But in the year 2000, there was a difference of 75 degrees in this direction dramatically and the Earth’s axis started moving towards the Greenwich Meridian. It is believed that this happened due to the shrinking of the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.

Another study done in this context revealed that redistribution and filling of water on the earth is also one of the reasons. The study is headed by Surendra Adhikari of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. According to him, the redistribution and filling of water on a global scale affects the rotation of the earth. The Indian subcontinent and the Caspian Sea are rapidly eroding huge amounts of water. In 2003, two thousand seven hundred and twenty trillion kilograms of ice was washed away in Greenland every year. Similarly, one thousand two hundred and forty trillion kilograms of ice flows away from West Antarctica and seven hundred and forty trillion kilograms from East Antarctica. For this study, data from the GRACE satellite has been used. Through this satellite, between 2002 and 2015, these facts have been discovered that what is the relationship with the direction of the Earth’s axis of rotation on the distribution of water bodies. Its results have also shown that the earth also oscillates under the influence of these water bodies.

Geologists are not unanimous about the impact of polar change on the Earth’s ecosystem. Some experts consider this change to be catastrophic, including hazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis. But other scientists dismiss these catastrophic predictions as baseless. According to their estimates, the Earth’s magnetic field has shifted about eleven hundred square kilometers in the last one and a half hundred years. This has happened about four hundred times in thirty five million years. This change takes a thousand or more years.

To control all these causes of climate change, the climate summit was held in Glasgow in November this year. In this ‘Section 6 Rules of the Paris Agreement’ has been brought into existence. This has widened the scope of discussions on the importance, prospects and challenges of the carbon market. But how meaningful its results will be, it is currently in the womb of the future. In this context, the challenge of ice famine does not have to be faced, for this initiative to curb industrial production is necessary.