According to NASA and European satellite data, sea levels on Earth have been rapidly increasing to completely unprecedented points. Based on studies made in the past 25 years global, it was thought that sea levels were to grow more steadily rather than drastically, but the sudden upward trend has been accredited to global warming’s exponential increase.
Climate change has been consequently taking a toll in both Greenland and Antarctica, where it has been predicted that by the year 2100 water levels will have reached 26 inches more. Back in 1993, satellite data was used to predict that three-quarters of sea level rise were due to melting continental ice sheets from the far North.
What is behind the dramatic sea level rise?
In the past 25 years, 2.8 of the inches of the increased sea level have been caused both by the warming waters expansion and the melting of continental ice sheets. In actual stats, 55% of sea level rise has been attributed to water expansion and the remaining 45% to melting ice sheets.
During the 1990s, sea level rise had an average of 0.1 inches (2.5 millimeters ) per year, until our era where yearly sea level grows on a 0.13 (3.4 millimeters) average per year, but the constant melting of icebergs or ice sheets increases 4 cm.
Sea level, however, is expected to continue for centuries as thermal expansion seems to be a natural response from the environment’s climate system; in fact, it was 20,000 years ago when sea level rise reached 120 m above coast levels. This occurred because of the water expansion level melting ice sheets.
In 1981, there was a published study entitled Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide which predicted the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions and warning for its potential impact on climate during the 21st century. It proposed that the melting of the West Atlantic ice sheet alone would create a sea level rise of 5 to 6 meters.
Global warming is always one of the answers
One of the main reasons for ice melting in Antarctica is the world’s temperature going up. A UN draft resolution gathered scientific study results on climate change, and the summary reported that there is a very high and likely risk for Earth’s temperature to reach and exceed 1.5 degrees over industrial levels.
The problem with Earth reaching this temperature is that it’ll be a point of no return for the environment, especially since every climate change response will affect actual shifts on the weather, which in turn will affect people in every country and particularly people who live in poverty and disadvantage.
Source: National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America