Open Polar Sea feasibility?
I know it's been proven false in our world, but what is the most plausible mechanism by which an Open Polar Sea could form and persist? I don't mean all the ice melting, but an open sea as it was imagined, surrounded by ice, before people actually travelled there and found out it was wrong.
Clarification: I tried to make this clear, but I'm not looking for a 'global warming will melt it all' answer. The sea would still be surrounded by ice, as I said.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/5246. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
There has to be some sort of heat source for this to happen, and it can't be something temporary. Here are some ideas:
-
Volcanic Activity. Vodolaz095 beat me to posting this, but I was already working on it, so I can't claim priority but I can expand on it. For volcanic activity, you need a source. An underwater volcano is possible but a little unlikely - in its "volcano" form, that is. An enormous hydrothermal vent might be slightly more effective. You can clearly get to the necessary temperatures to melt ice - the hottest vents discovered on Earth are hotter than 400 degrees Celsius - but you need a way to get that hot water circulating around.
You have to create ocean currents to get around this mess. You could, of course, use the temperature difference to have the water flow, but another way would be to take advantage of the Coriolis effect. The problem here is now that you aren't necessarily going to have the right kind of Coriolis effect at the poles, but perhaps you could figure something out. Maybe a huge amplification of a wobble of the planet's axis could solve this issue.
Also, a small volcano isn't going to do any good. You need a string of them - like the mid-Atlantic ridge, except really active. Perhaps you could encircle the pole with a chain of large vents, thus providing a lot of heat.
Axis flip. Another idea (which won't work here, as per your comment) would be to have the planet's axis be flipped 90 degrees so that it points at the star. Mercury endures scorching temperatures because of its proximity to the Sun. Maybe move the planet back a bit further, so it's not too hot, and you'll have a pole that's too hot for ice, but just hot enough for liquid water.
0 comment threads
0 comment threads