How would the number of moons impact the earth’s environment?

First of all, how does our moon impact our planet? It keeps the Earth’s wobble on its axis, making a stable climate. The gravitational tug from the moon influences our tides, which influences our environment greatly, for both humans and animals.

What if the Earth had 2 moons?
Tides will be eight times higher, due to the gravitational pull of the second moon. More earthquakes and greater volcanic activity will occur continuously for years, causing the extinction of marine lives. Cities near waters would be destroyed and flooded due to larger tides. Evenings will be brighter, and there will be fewer hours of real darkness causing different sleeping patterns.

But what would happen if we didn’t have a moon?
 You can imagine how lonely the night sky will be without the beautiful moonlight. Earth without a moon will just be very sad. Like mentioned earlier, tides influences our environment greatly. With no moon, the oceans will have smaller tides, about a third of the size of the current tides. Tides influences the plants and animals that thrives. Animals in coastal ecosystems rely on tides for survival. Like crabs, mussels, starfish, and snails. Like sand crabs, they follow the tides to make sure they’re in the right depth to burrow in the wet sand when waves arrive. If tides change, it may prevent the growth of marine vegetation and habitats which will affect many sea animals on the coastal ecosystems. It could also lead to extinctions. Fishing will also be more difficult because marine animals move by the tide’s movements.
Tidal movements are involved with stabilizing the Earth’s climate. Different water temperatures are distributed around due to ocean currents that are driven by tides. So without the moon to make sure of this, temperatures in the ocean would change.

With no moon to shine at night will confuse animals around the world. Predators hunt better at night when it’s dark and there’s some moonlight. Without this ability predators will have a harder time catching prey, which means prey will thrive.

Seasons will change drastically. Seasons change because of the Earth’s tilt. The moon’s gravity stabilizes the tilt, but without the moon the tilt might not move at all, meaning no seasons. Or the tilt will be larger, meaning extreme weather changes like ice ages which will happen on different parts of the world every few thousand years.

And lastly, what if Earth had Jupiter’s moons?

Just like if Earth had 2 moons, tides will be much higher. Coastal cities will be flooded so they’ll have to be abandoned. Jupiter has 4 giants moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Europa is 90% the size of our moon. It’s covered in ice meaning the reflection will be very bright, probably about five times brighter than the moonlight from our moon.

Ganymede is one and a half times larger than our moon and has double the mass. The large moon has its own gravitational pull, which will impact the earth’s tides greatly meaning tsunamis, extreme earthquakes, and more volcanic activities will happen. The gravitational pull is strong enough to have the Earth tidally locked so that it’ll always be facing one side of the Earth. But Ganymede will also cause the Earth’s climate to be more stable. Because of its large size, it would stabilize the angle of Earth’s rotation on its axis. This will cause fewer seasonal changes, and no more ice ages.

We’d also have more months in a year. One for every moon in the sky, which is 92 currently. Satellites in our orbit will be destroyed in collision with the moons. Space missions will be risky. Earth might end up with rings because the orbit will be very clustered. The Sun’s gravity could pull the moons from the Earth, because the Earth’s gravitational pull might not be strong enough to hold that many moons. And in the process, some moons will be colliding with Earth.