What makes ice important?

Answer 1

Ice is important for a number of reasons. It regulates the temperature and climate of the planet as the white surface of ice reflects a lot of solar radiation which would otherwise be absorbed without ice. Ice also holds a huge amount of the world's freshwater supply, making it important to the existence of many living groups who need freshwater over seawater. As ice is a huge storage of water, if the contents were in liquid form, the global sea level would rise extremely high and much of the world's land would become submerged. The impacts of this would be mad. Ice also benefits many ecosystems who cannot thrive without it - unless they were given a long period of time to evolve to life without it. These are just a few of the basic reasons, i'm sure there are much more complex factors which make ice important.