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pikapika!
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I've heard that if the ice caps melt the oceans will rise.
but i thought that water expands when freezing.
is this a myth?
but i thought that water expands when freezing.
is this a myth?
pikapika! said:I've heard that if the ice caps melt the oceans will rise.
but i thought that water expands when freezing.
is this a myth?
pikapika! said:I've heard that if the ice caps melt the oceans will rise.
but i thought that water expands when freezing.
is this a myth?
Langbein said:Take a glass of water and put an ice cube into it. Wait until it melts. Which way did the surphase of the water in the glass move, up or down?
DaveC426913 said:The density of floating ice vs. water has no effect on water level. See diagram.
cristo said:Neither.. the water level remains the same.
Langbein said:Take a glass of water and put an ice cube into it. Wait until it melts. Which way did the surphase of the water in the glass move, up or down?
Ice melt from ice over water will not increase sea level, only ice melt from ice over land will have an impact and it will not be uniform, there will be variations with rises in some areas, while other areas could see a fall.Plastic Photon said:True, but would you say this is an appropriate analogy, to compare the Earth's oceans to a cup of water?
From the IPCC, from the EPA...Ivan Seeking said:Evo, I was not aware of any predictions that water levels could fall in some areas. Where does this come from?
According to the IPCC, current model projections indicate substantial variability in future sea level rise between different locations. Some locations could experience sea level rise higher than the global average projections, while others could have a fall in sea level.
How would a floating iceberg cut off water flow? The water flows under it.Plastic Photon said:If say for some reason, a large iceberg cuts off the Berring, and the arctic ice melts...
DaveC426913 said:How would a floating iceberg cut off water flow? The water flows under it.
The Antarctic ice sheet is Earth's largest reservoir of fresh water. Accurate estimates of its mass variability, accompanied by realistic error bars, would greatly reduce current uncertainties in projected sea-level change, with obvious societal and economic impacts. There have been substantial improvements in monitoring the ice sheet in the past few years (1–3), although recent studies have provided contrasting mass balance estimates (1, 3).
Antarctic mass variability is difficult to measure because of the ice sheet's size and complexity. Previous estimates have used a variety of techniques (1), each with intrinsic limitations and uncertainties. A problem common to all these techniques is the difficulty of monitoring the entire ice sheet. Studies that rely on a single method can provide estimates for only a portion of the ice sheet, and even studies that synthesize results from several techniques suffer from sparse data in critical regions.
The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment estimated that the Antarctic contribution to sea-level rise during the past century was 0.2 ± 0.3 mm/year (2). The report predicted that the Antarctic ice sheet will probably gain mass during the 21st century because of increased precipitation in a warming global climate. Recent radar altimeter measurements (3) have shown an increase in the overall thickness of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet's (EAIS's) interior during 1992–2003. However, the IPCC prediction does not consider possible dynamic changes in coastal regions, and radar altimetry provides only sparse coverage of those areas (2). Detailed interferometric synthetic-aperture radar and airborne laser altimeter surveys of glaciers along the edge of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) show rapid increases in near-coastal discharge during the past few years (4). The overall contribution of the Antarctic ice sheet to global sea-level change thus depends on the balance between mass changes in the interior and those in coastal areas (1). The gravitational survey of Antarctica provided by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites and discussed in this paper is a comprehensive survey of the entire ice sheet and is thus able to overcome the issue of limited sampling.
Before interpreting the scaled results as ice sheet change, we had to address the issues of errors in the GRACE gravity fields and the contamination from other geophysical sources of gravity-field variability.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/311/5768/1754By fitting a trend and annual and semiannual terms to the WAIS and EAIS results, we find that most of the Antarctic mass loss comes from WAIS. After correcting for the hydrology leakage and the PGR signal, we obtain a WAIS mass loss of 148 ± 21 km3/year. The EAIS mass loss is 0 ± 56 km3/year. Because of its relatively large uncertainty, we are not able to determine whether EAIS is in balance or not.
Ice caps are large, thick sheets of ice that cover the Earth's polar regions. They are important because they reflect sunlight back into space, helping to regulate the Earth's temperature and maintaining a stable climate.
Ice caps are melting due to rising global temperatures caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and industrial processes. This leads to a decrease in the amount of ice accumulating in the polar regions and an increase in melting.
As ice caps melt, the water from the melted ice flows into the oceans, causing sea levels to rise. This can lead to flooding of coastal areas and displacement of communities living in low-lying areas.
The rate at which ice caps are melting has been increasing in recent decades. According to NASA, the Arctic has lost an average of 13.3% of its sea ice per decade since 1979, and Antarctica has lost an average of 144 gigatons of ice per year since 2002.
The most effective way to slow down the melting of ice caps is to reduce our carbon footprint by using renewable energy sources, reducing our consumption of fossil fuels, and promoting sustainable practices. Additionally, protecting and preserving natural habitats, such as forests, can help absorb carbon dioxide and mitigate the effects of climate change. It is important for individuals, communities, and governments to take action to address this pressing issue.