SEA LEVEL RISE
1. Definition:
1.1 Sea level:
- Is the level of the ocean's surface, especially the level halfway between mean high and low tide
- Be used as a standard in reckoning land elevation or sea depths.
1.2 Sea level rises:
- Happens when the mean high tide level increases year after year
2. Reasons:
Sea levels are rising today not only because of thermal expansion but also melting of glaciers and polar ice caps.
2.1Thermal expansion
As seawater becomes warmer it expands. Heat in the upper layer of the ocean is released quickly into the atmosphere. However, heat absorbed by the deeper layers of the ocean will take much longer to be released and therefore, be stored in the ocean much longer and have significant impacts on future ocean warming.
2.2 Melting of glaciers and polar ice caps:
Large ice formations, like glaciers and the polar ice caps, naturally melt back a bit each summer. But in the winter, snows, made primarily from evaporated seawater, are generally sufficient to balance out the melting. Recently, though, persistently higher temperatures caused by global warming have led to greater-than-average summer melting as well as diminished snowfall due to later winters and earlier springs. This imbalance results in a significant net gain in runoff versus evaporation for the ocean, causing sea levels to rise.
2.3 Ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica:
As with glaciers and the ice caps, increased heat is causing the massive ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica melt at an accelerated pace.
- The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica which fully melted would raise sea level by 64m.
- With Greenland, loss of between 50 and 100 billion tons of ice has taken place annually over the period 1993-2003 with...
... middle of paper ...
...s needing to be constructed.
5. Solutions
- High levees system for each country affected by sea level rising.
- Floating homes — yes, what used to be called houseboats —a re popular as ever, and other flood-prone countries are trying their own hands at water-top homes.
- Burn fewer fossil fuels.
A new study by the Scripps Institution for Oceanography, NCAR, and Climate Central, says curbing emissions of certain pollutants can help prevent the sea level rise.
- Reducing emissions of four specific pollutants—methane, tropospheric ozone, hydrofluorocarbons and black carbon—we could possibly prevent the rate of sea level rise by approximately 25 to 50 percent.
- Less fracking, cutting back on motor vehicle exhaust, industrial emissions and chemical solvents, including windshield washer fluid, creating fewer CFCs and cutting back on anything that creates smoke or soot
Oceans cover around seventy percent of the Earth’s surface. The oceans of the world have a direct relationship with weather and climate – they influence the weather both locally and globally and the changes in climate in exchange have an affect on properties of the oceans. Changes that occur to the ocean for the most part occur over a much longer period than in the atmosphere. Even if carbon dioxide emissions were to be stabilized today, it would centuries for oceans to adjust to the changes in the atmosphere. When greenhouse gases trap more energy for the sun, oceans then absorb more heat; and in turn there is a rise in sea surface temperatures as well rising sea levels. Oceans do help to reduce climate change due to the fact that they
It is predicted that the effect of permafrost melting will be that the ocean levels will rise and will significantly increase the temperature and accelerate the rate at which global warming occurs. Permafrost covers 24% of the land in the Northern Hemisphere (Insert Citation), if this was to melt 1700 gigatonnes of methane and carbon dioxide (Insert Citation), powerful heat trapping gases, would be released into the atmosphere increasing the amount of greenhouse gases by 200%.
Various glaciers in Alaska and other parts of the United States have shrunk dramatically. If temperatures continue to rise, the ice will continue to melt, and some glaciers could disappear completely, which causes sea levels to rise. There are many animals, birds, and seafood that depend solely on glaciers for survival. With an increase in sea water temperature, and increasing sea levels, sea-plants that these fish thrive on will be lost, lowering the number of seafood, which in-turn will make survival of many species difficult. The arctic is source region for cold ocean currents and with no ice it will have no density and temperature distinctions, which pushes the ocean currents. If the ocean current heat transfer mechanism powers down,
Recent studies based on satellite monitoring by NASA reveals that melting ice from both the poles has been responsible for a fifth of the global rising sea levels since 1992 (11 mm). Antarctica and Greenland are now contributing three times as much ice to sea levels as they were 20 years ago. Although the Greenland ice sheet is only about...
Imagine the world where all the ice of the poles has melted away. Much of northern Europe is a part of the Atlantic Ocean. Florida is completely submerged underwater. Memphis Tennessee is now a coastal city along the Gulf Coast. It was different once. Cities like Miami and London use to be popular tourist destinations in the early 21st Century. All of the low lying cities like Miami, New Orleans, London, and Paris are under hundreds of feet of water. The ice locked in the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica has melted away, dumping most of our freshwater into the seas. Much of our freshwater supply and farmland is not contaminated or swallowed by the rising oceans since the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets melted. How could we as people prevent this massive disaster that the world has never been experienced before?
A. Sea level rise- The temperatures around the globe rise, the oceans start to warm up and water expands, the ice caps and glaciers start to melt, and more precipitation starts to fall falls instead of snow. These are some of the causes for sea levels rising. Recorded by the Department of Ecology, the sea levels have risen four to ten inches in the past one hundred years. When the climate changes it usually increases the oceans temperatures, causing water to expand which causes the sea level to rise by thermal expansion. When the water amount begins to take up more space. The sea level rising depends souly on the temperature of the ocean. Climate Change is also effected by ice glaciers melting over areas of land, which run off into our oceans. A big contribution to climate change and sea level rising is the melting ice masses of Antarctica and Greenland.
...st continuous rate, showing no signs of slacking. With the continuous rise in global temperature sea levels are predicted to continue to rise at an alarming rate, unless measures are put in place to reduce the rise in climate change.
The use of fossil fuels has greatly increased the amount of atmospheric and oceanic CO2 to a point where it’s ruining the natural flow of the world; the earth’s temperature is rising. As a result, the polar ice caps are melting causing the seas to rise. With only a 1 meter increase in sea level the United States alone could lose over 10,000 square miles of land, and thousands of houses will be destroyed. The effects will be just as prominent around the world: many islands will become submerged, 17% of Bangladesh will be underwater, and tens of thousands of people will be displaced (“Global Warming” 3).
With talk of global warming still being threatened by scientists and governments, the depletion of the polar ice is a major concern. Many experiments have been done to monitor current ice levels and predict future ice levels. Since then scientists have tried to discover what would cause the melting of our polar ice. One major concern is that the melting of the polar ice would create extreme flooding for all costal and island inhabitants. Is the polar ice melting and could greenhouse gases be the cause?
Sea levels are also affected by global temperature change. Because the polar ice caps are melting and that’s causing more water to be on earth and causing our sea levels to rise. Our Sea levels have been rising and have risen 4 inches within the last century. Which causes less land for us because in will be overtaken by new water rising from the ice melting away. We’d have to go to higher grounds, the less the land the less people we can have. Ocean animals will be harmed when the cold water comes down if they're not suppose to be in cold water and cold water animals will be harmed because they're not suppose to be in warmer waters. The polar bears and other arctic animals will become extinct once there habitat is gone. Tectonic plates are affected too it doesn’t only move land but also the sea. It can cause tsunamis and earthquakes.
However, climate change is happening. The global average land and sea temperature has increased over the twentieth century, with the North and South Poles being particularly affected (Learmonth, et al., 2006). In turn, this has caused ice cover to decrease and sea levels
“Sea Level Rise And Climate Change Exiles: A Possible Solution.” Pg. 24-25. Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists 71.2 (2015): 21-28. Academic Search Premier. Web. May 05, 2015. http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=3&sid=3e7741d7-90c0-4cde-a385-0b99616c0ab4%40sessionmgr113&hid=113&hid=113&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGI2ZQ%3d%3d#db=f5h&AN=101327662
Buildings and houses in coastal areas that are low can be flooded from the sea level rising and even submerged..The sea level rising can cause harm to the environment in coastal wetlands including the habitat. Human caused global warming has caused 3 inches of sea level rise since 1992 and some places it has even been 9 inches. Two third of the sea level rising is caused by expansion of warmer ocean waters and only one third comes from the glaciers and ice sheets melting. As you can see in the chart right here, you can see that the annual global air temperature increasing has resulted in the trend of sea level rising. In 1960, the temperature was low and so there was no sea level change but as the years go on you can see that the temperature increases, and so does the seal level. By 2010, it has almost reached
Jacob, T., Wahr, J., Pfeffer, T. W., & Swenson, S. (2012). Recent contributions of glaciers and ice caps to sea level rise. Nature, 514-518. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature10847
Scientists appear to have become aware of the issue of rising sea levels in the mid to late 1980s. An article published in Science News in 1987 predicted that “global warming… will cause… the world's oceans to expand, raising the average sea level by 4 to 8 centimeters in the next 40 years” (Monastersky). Though 4 to 8 centimeters sounds like a miniscule amount in relation to the vastness of the world’s oceans, this early article disturbed many readers. Many for this reason: early stud...