Melting Icebergs Result in Sea Level Rise
30.04.2010 - Water & Oceans, Ice & Snow, Bi-polar
New research published in Geophysical Research Letters is the first assessment of the current loss of floating ice. A team of scientists has discovered that changes in the amount of ice floating in the polar oceans are causing sea levels to rise.
While Archimedes' principle states that any floating object displaces its own weight the fluid it’s floating in, there’s a twist to that principle concerning the floating ice in the polar oceans: because sea water is warmer and more salty than floating ice, changes in the amount of this ice are having an effect on global sea levels.
Through a combination of satellite observations and a computer model, the scientists looked at the thickness of sea ice and ice shelves, and found an overall 742 km³ yearly reduction in the volume of floating ice. The greatest losses were due to the rapid retreat of Arctic Sea ice and to the collapse and thinning of ice shelves at the Antarctic Peninsula and in the Amundsen Sea.
However minimal the resulting global sea rise may be (49 micrometers per year), the scientists believe it would be unwise to ignore this signal, as they have already had major impacts on regional climate.
