Reply #54: Start your poking here [View All]

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.news.utoronto.ca/science-and-technology/university-of-toronto-geophysicists-predict-amplification-of-sealevel-rise-1.html

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"The typical estimate of the sea-level change is five metres, a value arrived at by taking the total volume of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, converting it to water and spreading it evenly across the oceans, Mitrovica said. "However, this estimate is far too simplified because it ignores three significant effects:

1. when an ice sheet melts, its gravitational pull on the ocean is reduced and water moves away from it. The net effect is that the sea level actually falls within 2,000 km of a melting ice sheet and rises progressively further away from it. If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapses, sea level will fall close to the Antarctic and will rise much more than the expected estimate in the northern hemisphere because of this gravitational effect;

2. the depression in the Antarctic bedrock that currently sits under the weight of the ice sheet will become filled with water if the ice sheet collapses. However, the size of this hole will shrink as the region rebounds after the ice disappears, pushing some of the water out into the ocean and this effect will further contribute to the sea-level rise;

3. the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will actually cause the Earth´s rotation axis to shift rather dramatically - approximately 500 metres from its present position if the entire ice sheet melts. This shift will move water from the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans northward toward North America and into the southern Indian Ocean.

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