Earth’s ice caps are temporary and rare, study suggests

By Paul Scott Anderson – EarthSky

Like the planet next door to us, Mars, Earth has ice caps at its North Pole and South Pole. The northern one floats on an ocean, and the southern one rests on land. But how did Earth’s ice caps form? And why do they exist at all? As it turns out, we just happen to live in a time when Earth’s ice caps exist. Researchers at the University of Leeds in the U.K. said on February 17, 2025, that ice caps are the rare result of various complex cooling processes that happened simultaneously. These scientists said that, for most of Earth’s history, the poles have been ice-free.