Climate Change-Rising Sea Levels
What Is Rising Sea Levels?Scientific research indicates sea levels worldwide have been rising at a rate of 3.5 millimeters per year since the early 1990s. The trend, linked to global warming, puts thousands of coastal cities, like Venice, Italy, and even whole islands at risk of being claimed by the ocean.
How Will Rising Sea Levels Affect Us?Consequences
When sea levels rise rapidly, as they have been doing, even a small increase can have devastating effects on coastal habitats. As seawater reaches farther inland, it can cause destructive erosion, flooding of wetlands, contamination of agricultural land, and lost habitat for fish, birds, and plants. When large storms hit land, higher sea levels mean bigger, more powerful storm surges that can strip away everything in their path. In addition, hundreds of millions of people live in areas that will become increasingly vulnerable to flooding. Higher sea levels would force them to abandon their homes and relocate. Low-lying islands could be submerged completely. How High Will It Go?
Most predictions say the warming of the planet will continue and likely will accelerate. Oceans will likely continue to rise as well, but predicting the amount is hard. A recent study says we can expect the oceans to rise between 0.8 and 2 meters by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast. Worse estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, push sea level rise to 7 meters, enough to submerge London and Los Angeles.
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What Is Causing Rising Sea Levels?Thermal expansion: When water heats up, it expands. About half of the past century's rise in sea level is because of warmer oceans simply occupying more space.
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 mostly from evaporated seawater, are generally sufficient to balance out the melting. Recently, though, higher temperatures caused by global warming have led to greater-than-average summer melting as well as less snowfall due to later winters and earlier springs. This results in a significant gain in runoff versus evaporation for the ocean, causing sea levels to rise. 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 to melt at an accelerated pace. Scientists also believe melt water from above and seawater from below is seeping beneath Greenland's and West Antarctica's ice sheets, effectively lubricating the ice and causing it to move more quickly into the sea. More importantly, higher sea temperatures are causing the massive ice shelves that extend out from Antarctica to melt from below, weaken, and break off. What Can We Do?Up to this day, scientist have been talking about this problem for some time now. Even they have not come with a solution for that problem.
If we stop global warming, then we stop rising sea levels. The rising sea levels are due to global warming. Reducing the global temperature is apparently the only practical solution. |