What happens if polar caps melt

Yes, I did all of this with some very short python code. The best part is that you can change any of my estimates. Just click the "pencil" icon and you can input values that you think are better. I won't be offended or even know. View Iframe URL. So you see how bad this could be. Even if my estimates are off by a little bit—it seems clear that there could be a very significant sea level rise.

That would suck. Note that this is just an approximation. I didn't take into account the loss of land surface area that gets flooded by the rising seas. This would actually decrease the sea level rise, as it would have a greater area to spread out.

But even if you let the water spread over a complete Earth including the land , it would be an increase of 62 meters feet.

I guess I should also point out that I ignored the curvature of the Earth and assumed it was a flat plat the flat-Earthers would be happy. But since the change in sea level is very small compared to the radius of the Earth, I think this approximation is fairly fine. Well, fine as an estimation—not fine as the disaster it would cause. But what about the melting ice at the North Pole?

Although there is significant melting , it doesn't contribute to sea level rise. The big difference is that the Arctic ice is floating while the Antarctic ice is sitting on land.

Why does this even matter? I can show you with an example of a classic physics question. Imagine you have a glass of water with a single large ice cube in it. Since the density of solid ice is slightly less than the density of liquid water, the ice floats. Here is a diagram of the floating ice. Why does stuff float? I know this might seem crazy, but it's because of the gravitational force. Imagine that you have a glass of water without any motion in the cup no currents.

You can take a small section of the water in the middle of the cup and look at the forces acting on it. Let's say this is a small cube of water with each side of length s. Since the water block is stationary, the total force on this block must be zero—this is true for any object in static equilibrium. One force that should obviously be acting on the water block is the downward pulling gravitational force. But then what force pushes UP on the water? The answer is more water.

Yes, the water below this block pushes up on the water above it the original block of water. This is the only way for the water to stay stationary—so, it has to be true. We call this upward pushing force from the water the buoyancy force. The buoyancy force on the small block of water has to be equal to the gravitational force pulling down on the water. During that period, the ice sheet lost mass at increasing rates — from 44 billion tons per year between and to as much as billion tons a year by Though sea-level rise is measured in millimeters right now, that could soon change.

Most studies point out that ice loss and sea-level rise will keep increasing in magnitude as time goes on. One study finds a noticeable inflection point in , where under the worst-case scenario, the ice sheets begin adding tens of millimeters to sea levels every decade, ending up with over a foot of sea-level rise.

One reason for this could be that ice sheets are flowing into the ocean at ever-quickening rates. As warmer ocean water eats away at their base, the massive glaciers that sprawl from mountains in Antarctica and Greenland and extend far out into the ocean have less holding them back. The result is ice that falls into the ocean, where it can melt ever faster.

One glacier in Greenland, for example, doubled its speed recently within just five years. That means even getting our emissions under control and putting a halt to global warming might not stop the ice sheets from melting.

Though some parts of the continent have been seeing more precipitation, Antarctica has lost ice, on average, since we began keeping tabs on it. We need only look back in time to see what we might be in for. During the last interglacial period, a bit over , years ago, global temperatures were around 3 degrees hotter than today.

Despite that relatively small change in temperature, sea levels may have been 10 feet higher than they are today. Is it a glimpse of our future? Only time will tell. Register or Log In.

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