Sea Levels Rising Pose Threat to the Future

For decades now, we have been living in an age of increased global warming.  According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, global temperatures have risen 1.4ºF in the past century, and it is only getting worse since the past ten years have been the warmest on record to date.  The reason that global warming is such an issue has to do with the chain reaction of negative effects that follow a warmer-than-normal atmosphere.  Of these many effects, ice sheets melting and sea levels rising are some of the most prevalent because they will affect the greatest amount of people (not to mention the unimaginable amount of precious ecosystems). Two masses of ice that are the target of scientists today are Greenland's 1 million-square-mile ice sheet and Antarctica's 800,000 square-mile Pine Island Glacier.  Studies being done on these two ice sheets show the correlation between atmospheric warming and sea level rising as well as the projected damage to coastal living regions.

Due to the recent global warming, the North Atlantic waters that surround Greenland's ice sheet are the warmest they have been in the past 100 years.  This is important to scientists because they aim to study the melting going on around the edges of the ice sheet where glacier meets the warming ocean.  Here, the glaciers melt and extend into the ocean contributing to increased flow of water into the sea.  Another contributor to the ice sheet melting is the surface pools that develop on top of glaciers in response to warmer temperatures.  These pools trickle down deeply into the glacier causing fresh water rivers underneath.  When these freshwater rivers reach the ocean, the fresh and salt water rapidly mix contributing to the heat transfer from ocean to ice.  Also, these crevices created as a result of flowing of water from the top to underneath the ice mass can literally crack the glacier causing massive chunks of ice to fall into the ocean.  During this study done by physical oceanographers, ice loss from Greenland's ice sheet has increased four-fold causing nearly one-quarter of global sea level rise.

Studies have shown that even the smallest increase in melting of land glaciers can dramatically increase once the process has begun.  In the past twenty years, the Pine Island Glacier has been thinning about 5 feet per year, and increasing its rate evermore.  One of the reasons this is happening is because  the glaciers floating on water that surround the land ice are disappearing by more than 0.6 miles each year.  This floating ice served as a sort of protection barrier to the land ice.  Therefore, as the floating ice disappears, the land ice rapidly thins.  Since the melting of the Pine Glacier accounts for 25% of Antartica's total ice loss, scientists predict it will contribute to a rise in sea level of 0.4 inches in the next few decades.

Along with these disturbing facts about Greenland and the Pine Glacier's contribution to sea levels rising, NASA predicts that the sea level will rise 3 feet by 2100.  This projection displaces 145 million people and affects the lives of 2 billion people living in coastal regions around the world.  Sea levels rising causes flooding damage and storm surges along the coasts everywhere.  Damages are predicted to cost up to $100 billion per year by the end of the century if no adaptation measures are taken.

Posted by: Nicole Bosivert (4)