So, most scientists agree that the polar regions are losing ice & snow fairly rapidly, and sea levels are rising.
Current estimates are < 1 centimeter per year, and admittedly, this is not a lot.
However, it is important to realize there are two factors that combine to make things worse for us land dwellers: melting snow and ice + thermal expansion of ocean column.
- ICE / SNOW MELT-WATER: Ancient fresh water stored in the arctic regions is melting rather quickly. Further, this melt-water sea level rise is non-linear, and is accelerating steadily. That means that although it is only rising 1 cm per year today, scientists are anticipating 2 to 10 times that rate over the next two or three decades.
“The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest single mass of ice on Earth. It covers an area of almost 14 million square km and contains 30 million cubic km of ice. Around 90 percent of the fresh water on the Earth’s surface is held in the ice sheet, an amount equivalent to 70 m of water elevation in the world’s oceans.”
– ScienceDaily - EXPANSIVE RISE: As the planet warms, so does the sea. As the sea warms, it will also expand. It’s very simple math really — if heat were to expand a 2 mile deep column of water only 0.01%, this results in a surface rise of over 10 feet (3+ meters), in addition to the melt-water effect.
What is the average elevation of the State of Florida again? Yup, 6 feet.
From research conducted by the Smithsonian and ClimateCentral:
“Carbon emissions causing 4 degrees Celsius of warming (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) — a business-as- usual scenario — could lock in enough eventual sea level rise to submerge land currently home to 470 to 760 million people globally.”
These are scary numbers, especially when this inundation is in conjunction with many of the world’s ecosystems simultaneously under extreme duress.
