Imagine one morning you wake up and
flick through your phone to find that
all the ice on Earth has melted away.
Every glacier, ice sheet, and snow drift
simply gone? What would planet Earth
look like? And more importantly, could
this ever happen for real? I'm James
Stewart and you're watching Astramm
Earth. Join me in this video as we
journey through a world without ice.
What would happen to our planet? Which
places would be most affected? And would
anyone actually benefit from this worst
of worstc case scenarios? Whilst this
would mean misery for billions, there
are always some that seek to benefit.
But firstly, let's deal with the giant
frozen elephant in the room. Why are we
even talking about this? Historically,
an icefree world isn't as unusual as it
sounds. We've been there before.
For the past 12,000 years, we've been in
an interglacial period. Yeah, that means
technically we are still in an ice age,
which given our rising temperatures and
record-breaking summers can be easy to
forget. And it makes sense. Compared to
previous ice ages, the average
temperatures are higher and ice sheets
smaller. But in the interglacial period
before this one, around 130,000 years
ago, things were even warmer than they
are today. Temperatures were 2° above
pre-industrial levels, and sea levels
stood 6.6 6 to 9 m higher than they are
right now. Mainly due to melt from the
Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.
But it's when we go even further back
that things get really interesting.
Today, Antarctica is Earth's biggest ice
sheet. But if you were to stand on it
100 million years ago, there wouldn't be
a snowflake in sight. Instead, you'd be
in a dense subtropical forest, much like
those now found on New Zealand's North
Island. Sea levels at this time peaked
at around 200 m, the highest they've
been in the last 540 million years.
All over this ancient continent, plants
thrived under the quite bizarre
conditions of 24-hour sun in the summer,
followed by 6 months of darkness in the
winter.
Antarctica was alive with more than just
vegetation, too. Fossil records show
that dinosaurs roam the lands. It was
home to a 4meter long armored
Anklosaurus,
gigantic long necked soropods, and many
more. This period, 100 to 66 million
years ago, when the land dinosaurs all
died out, is the last time we are
certain the Earth was entirely ice free.
Clearly, today things are very
different. The once green terrain of
Antarctica is now covered by an ice
sheet larger than the area of the USA
and Mexico combined, measuring an
incredible 4.9 km at its thickest point
and holding around 60% of the Earth's
total fresh water. Greenland ships in
another 8 to 10%. And the rest is made
up of mountain glaciers, small caps, and
finally the cryossphere, all the other
frozen parts of the planet, sea ice,
snow cover, and the vast areas of frozen
ground called perafrost.
So, let's get into what happens if all
of that vanishes.
Perhaps the first thing that springs to
mind is the rise in global sea levels
and just how big an impact that would
have. At the time of the last dinosaurs,
sea levels were a staggering 66 m above
what they are today, making them almost
shoulder height with the Statue of
Liberty. And if all the ice melted
today, the same would happen again. The
majority of that water, of course, comes
from Antarctica, which alone would cause
a 58 m sea level rise globally if it
melted. When you add in all the other
ice on Earth, sea level rise gets to
around 71 m, and the world map gets a
brutal redesign.
Nearly every single coastline will be
plunged beneath the waves, wiping out
major cities everywhere.
On the west coast of the United States,
Los Angeles would be underwater, and San
Francisco would become its own island.
The east coast wouldn't fare much better
either. The entire states of Florida,
New York, and even Washington DC would
vanish. In Europe, we'd lose the
entirety of the Netherlands, all of
Denmark, and nearly half of Belgium. The
UK, where I currently live, would become
an archipelago. And the city I call
home, London, would be no more. And
further east, the Black and Caspian seas
would connect for the first time in 5
and a half million years, freeing up
Kazakhstan, Usbekiststan, Turk Menistan,
and Azabaijan to be landlocked no more.
Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo
would face new watery landscapes and
would lose the entire country of
Bangladesh.
173 million people displaced in an
instant.
Only Africa would escape relatively
unscathed in comparison, although Cairo
and Alexandria in Egypt would become
casualties, as would parts of Moritania
on the West Coast.
But sea level rise is only the beginning
of the havoc ice melt would wreak
because arguably something much worse
would also happen.
The idea of billions of people losing
their homes, infrastructure,
livelihoods, and potentially even their
lives is simply horrifying. It makes the
film The Day After Tomorrow feel quite
tame by comparison.
Whilst that's how melting ice would
affect us, the planet itself would
undergo something even more dramatic.
The movement of Earth would be altered.
Normally, as land ice melts, the mass of
the water is moved from the poles to the
ocean where it's spread around the
globe, essentially taking mass away from
Earth's axis of rotation.
This increases the Earth's moment of
inertia, that is, its resistance to
rotational acceleration. As a result,
the planet slows the same way an ice
skater does when they extend their arms
away from their torso to slower spin.
So, if the total mass of water stored in
ice sheets and glaciers, more than 30
million gigatons, was redistributed,
well, the planet would slow pretty
significantly.
But by how much?
One calculation determined that if all
the ice in Greenland alone melted, it
would increase the length of a day by
about 2 milliseconds.
As Greenland's ice mass is about a tenth
of the total mass of land ice, and most
of the world's ice is held at high
latitudes, we can extrapolate that a
total melt would increase the length of
a day by at least several milliseconds.
Now, that may seem small and benign in
our fast-paced world, but it's
comparable to how much the moon slows
down Earth over a century thanks to
tidal friction. Although almost
imperceptible to humans, technologies
that rely on precise timekeeping, such
as GPS, satellites, flight, and even
space travel, will be sent into complete
disarray.
Speed of rotation isn't the only change.
Shifts in mass cause the planet to
wobble, moving the Earth's spin axis
slightly from the imaginary line
connecting the geographic north and
south poles in a process called polar
motion.
A slight shift in polar motion or axial
tilt could trigger changes to climate,
seasons, weather patterns, and even
ocean currents with effects ranging from
subtle to dramatic depending on the
degree and speed of the shift.
Northern latitudes, for example, might
see longer, hotter summers, while
southern regions could get harsher
winters. Ocean currents such as the Gulf
Stream or even the AO driven by Earth
rotation could veer off course.
A slight tilt might disrupt the jetream,
leading to erratic storms. Think more
hurricanes in unexpected spots or
prolonged droughts.
In short, these seemingly subtle changes
would have huge ripple effects for those
of us left here on Earth. And things
don't stop there. Without massive ice
sheets pushing down on Greenland and
Antarctica, the land below starts a slow
comeback in a process known as glacial
isostatic adjustment.
Imagine the Earth's crust like a squishy
mattress under a heavy duvet. Well, that
gigaton weight presses it down, making
the edges bulge out. Ice acts over
thousands of years, turning the solid
crust into something more like thick
honey, viscous and flowy. So, what
happens when you remove the ice? The
depressed spots bounce back up while the
bulgy edges sink. It's like your memory
foam bed reshaping after you get up, but
on a planetary scale. Normally it takes
millennia. In our hypothetical scenario,
who knows?
Amazingly, this process is actually
happening as I speak. In Scandinavia,
people noticed their shoreline shifting
centuries ago. The ancient port of Tamar
in Sweden became landlocked by 1491, and
so the whole town was moved as a result.
In the 1700s, scientists carved sea
level marks on rocks and tracked the
changes. In the Gulf of Bosnia, sea
levels were dropping 1.4 cm a year, but
it varied at different points, proving
it was the land rising unevenly. But
why?
Well, during the last glacial maximum
about 21,000 years ago, huge ice sheets
blanketed northern Europe and North
America. As they melted, the squished
land started popping back up and so
Scandinavia is still rising today.
So, back to our icemelting scenario. The
underlying continents which previously
had ice on them would undergo
postglacial rebound on an enormous
scale. Precisely how much the land would
change shape and the impact this would
have on local sea levels is not yet
known.
calculations require greater
understanding of the mantle beneath
Greenland and Antarctica, as well as
more exact dates of when the ice sheets
first covered the land. What we do know
is that sea levels would continue
changing for a long time after all the
water has reached the sea.
In the shorter term, the immense ice
loss would instantly reconfigure the
Earth's gravitational field. This could
amplify sea levels in the tropics,
making a 66 m sea level rise even more
catastrophic for those living near the
equator. Whichever way you look at it,
it's not good news. But believe it or
not, there are some people that might
disagree. And I think one thing we can
less than 30 days as we head back to the video.
In a total glacial melt, uncovering
Antarctica and Greenland would bring
hidden worlds to the surface for the
first time in millions of years. But we
already know what they might look like.
Over the last century, scientists have
been mapping the bedrock below the ice
sheets using satellite surveys, radar,
seismic reflection, and gravity
measurements. They found that Antarctica
is made up of sharp mountains and
plunging valleys.
It's home to the deepest land canyon on
Earth, reaching depths of 3 1/2 km below
sea level. A 3D map of the continent
also clearly shows the distinction
between east and west Antarctica.
The east is generally more elevated,
while the west is a collection of
mountainous islands. These are
landscapes carved by rivers and 675
recorded subglacial lakes. The largest
lake Vostto is 250 km long and about 4
km underneath the ice. There are also
hundreds of volcanoes.
138 have been identified in West
Antarctica alone. Greenland on the other
hand has been mapped much less
extensively. But we do know it is shaped
by mountains and has at least 60
relatively small subglacial lakes. So
would an exposed Greenland and
Antarctica be barren? Or could humans
actually find a way to live there
successfully?
Whilst we don't know for sure, what we
do know is both likely have things we
need and they lie deep beneath the
surface.
Rare earth minerals.
Commercial mining in Antarctica was
banned under the Antarctic Treaty and as
such no extensive mineral reserves have
been identified. But the continent is
thought to be rich in minerals including
coal and oil. Similarly, in Greenland, a
2023 survey showed it has 25 of the 34
minerals deemed critical raw materials
by the European Commission, making it
the eighth largest gnome reserve
globally.
Some have argued that this is why
President Donald Trump has tried to
purchase Greenland on more than one
occasion.
In a world without ice, could treaties
be ripped up and a geopolitical land
scramble take place to gain access to
these resources? Well, based on our
history so far, you wouldn't bet against
it. In recent years, the Arctic Circle
has become the central focus of a
geopolitical conflict. As the ice caps
sadly melt away, nations such as the
United States, Russia, and China are
rushing to assert ownership over the
region's unclaimed territory. The Arctic
sits at a critical point between North
America and Eurasia, making it a
powerful place from which to project
military strength, and it also houses
vast natural resources.
A US geological survey estimates that
the region has 48 billion cubic meters
of natural gas and various other fuels,
equal the entirety of Russia's oil
reserves and three times as much as in
the United States.
The Chinese government has dubbed the
Arctic region as their polar silk road,
hinting at the trade routes they intend
on pursuing following the acquisition of
natural resources.
The difference here is that China has no
Arctic border. Instead, describing
themselves as a near Ararctic state,
even though its northernmost regional
capital, Harbin, is on roughly the same
latitude as Venice in Italy. As recently
as 2024, the last piece of privately
owned land in the Arctic archipelago,
Svalbar, was up for sale for a cool $324
million, dubbed the Gates to the Arctic.
In the end, the Norwegian government had
to step in and cool off the sale to
prevent its acquisition by China, and
not for the first time. Their attempts
to buy seapports in Norway and Sweden
and even an airport in Greenland have
also been rebuffed.
But it's not just countries that seek to
benefit from the world melting away,
either. Niche money-making schemes from
our thoring planet have sprung up all
over the place.
On a ship of Swalbar, entrepreneur Jamal
Kureshi is literally picking up blocks
of once Norwegian glacia ice from the
ocean and bottling it. The ice is
expensive and difficult to collect and
purify. And production is difficult,
too. So, limited to 13,000 bottles a
year, and it's currently selling for
$100 a bottle. In the Yakushia region of
Russia, the perafrost is melting and
it's revealing 11,000year-old
mammoth remains. Demand for this ethical
ivory has massively increased in China.
And a tusk can fetch up to $100,000 on
the black market.
The people who collect these fossilized
remains are known as tuskers. Carrying
powerful firefighter pumps on their
backs, they carve out enormous 180 ft
long tunnels under the frozen ground to
extract the bones. The race for the
Arctic is very much on and shows that
should our icef free world ever become a
reality. Well, it could lead to some
interesting geopolitics if Antarctica
and Greenland go the same way. But this
is purely theoretical. A ridiculous what
if that could never happen, right? Well,
the short answer is no. Certainly not in
many of our lifetimes at least. The
longer answer is that total ice melt is
very, very unlikely. But we could get
close, maybe a little too close. As
we've seen, significant cryossphere loss
has happened before. most recently in
the last interglacial period 130,000
years ago. We know this because there's
evidence of sea levels being 6 to 9 m
higher than today, meaning a large melt
of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice
sheets must have occurred in the past.
Global average temperatures in the last
interglacial period were 2° above
pre-industrial levels. Think from 1900
onwards, and we're already at 1.1°
higher now. This is down to human
activities, principally greenhouse gas
emissions. If our emissions continue at
their current high level, the
Intergovernmental Panel for Climate
Change, the IPCC, predicts an overall
temperature increase between 3.3 and
5.7°
by 2100.
Worryingly, the most recent IPCC report
noted that sustaining the lower level of
this warming between 2 and 3° could
eventually lead to an almost complete
and irreversible loss of the Greenland
and West Antarctic ice sheets.
This would cause at least 13 m of global
sea level rise. However, they
highlighted that evidence for this
conclusion was limited. Other research
has put a date to the complete melt of
one of the ice sheets at the year 3000,
producing a minimum of 7 m of global sea
level rise, assuming we don't rapidly
clean up our acts. That is a thousand
years might feel far away in the scope
of our lives, but in the usual time
frames of climate change and indeed
glaciology, this is incredibly fast.
Even in the time frame of human history,
this is unprecedented. Remember, we're
technically still in an ice age and have
had a relatively stable climate for the
past 12,000 years. So, both Greenland
and the West Antarctic ice sheet could
melt under sustained warming conditions.
But what about the much larger East
Antarctic ice sheet?
We don't think it's been ice free in 66
million years. But there are big
uncertainties under rapid global
warming. With limited observations, our
models of ice sheet processes and
interactions with the ocean atmosphere
and bedrock are incomplete. For
instance, warm ocean water can melt the
base of ice shelves, which accelerates
the glaciers retreat. But as ice melts,
the elastic rebound of bedrock causes
local sea level to fall and can
stabilize the ice shelves. At the
moment, we don't know how much effect
each has, and these gaps in knowledge
around Antarctica are driving a lot of
the current research. There isn't time
in this video to also flesh out other
impacts like perafrost feedback and the
slowing of the AOK, but luckily we have
a full video on this if you'd like more
information.
There are a lot of smallcale processes
that all play a part. Positive feedback
mechanisms in the cryossphere. Think
changes in albido, greenhouse gas
emissions, and ocean heat circulation.
Well, all those things create positive
feedback mechanisms that accelerate ice
loss.
This means that each level of melt can
lead to even more dramatic consequences.
These nonlinear responses to ice melt
have to be accounted for in climate
models to determine the full extent of
the impacts. But at the moment, we're
still working it out. So, what's the key
to stopping all this and keeping this
scenario hypothetical? Well, you already
know the answer to this, I'm sure.
significantly reducing greenhouse gas
emissions and slowing the temperature
rise as soon as possible.
As we come to the end of our journey
around a very different looking planet
Earth, we've dared to stare into the
darkest possible depths of our very
existence. Countries would be lost,
continents reshaped, and cities
destroyed.
billions would suffer and many more
would cease to exist at all. Meanwhile,
there are leaders, countries, and even
individuals, as you watch this,
currently preparing to profit from such
eventualities.
Some are even doing so already. To be
honest with you, when I first started
writing this video, an ice free world
felt almost novel. The sort of silly
hypothetical game of chance. But the
more I've peeled back the layers and
seen what would actually happen, the
closer this terrifying reality seems to
get and the more urgent the situation
has become. Fortunately, there is still
time to make a change and make this
hypothetical world just that. If you
learned something from this video or you
found it interesting, it would really
help us as a new channel if you could
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others get to enjoy it too. Thanks so
much for watching and we'll see you next
time.