Please this is not a debate about global warming. I just want to know if everything melted and the level of the sea rose will my house still be here? Does anyone know where I could find a map of what the U.S. would look like (just curious if I would have ocean-front property.) Thanks!
I’ve seen mugs that have the modern coastline on them, and when you fill them with hot liquid it turns into the global warming coastline.
I’ve only done a cursory search, but I found this page:
The article does not include the effect of the land rising as ice melts.
For example, if Antarctica lost all its ice, it would appear first as an archipelago of islands. However, with the loss of the weight of the ice pack, the land mass itself would start to rise gradually. There would be two effects - to drain more land-based melt water into the oceans, and to compress the world ocean into a slightly smaller space.
The same would apply to Greenland, and to a lesser extent to other ice covered land masses. The effect was seen after previous ice ages - ancient beaches can be found miles inland as a result.
These effects would result in an even higher water level, although I assume the land rise would take millennia to occur.
Unless there are tectonic forces at work, I don’t think this is true. Why would the land rises if the ice melts?
Because it’ not being depressed by the weight of the ice. Land rise is happening today, most visibly in Scandinavia
I’m not at my normal desk, so pardon my commenting from memory.
In brief, the land masses of the earth float on liquid rock. That is what makes the tectonic plates move around, forming and reforming continents etc.
Imagine a piece of wood is floating on water, and it has a large chunk of ice sitting on it. The wood will settle a little lower in the water because of the weight of the ice. If the ice melts or is removed from the piece of wood, it will float higher in the water.
The effect will be similar when you remove a large weight of ice from a tectonic plate - except that the plate will rise slowly, over millennia, not suddenly like the wood.
Is that a result of ice melting, or tectonic subduction and uplift?
Also, IIRC, in and around Hudsons Bay.
Isostatic Rebound is the term. In Scandinavia there is a measured peak rate of 11mm/year.
Ice melt volume is not the entire answer, nor is isostic rebound (The land rising) from the release of overburden. The volume of the worlds water would increase as temperature increases. That fact is further complicated by the as yet not adequately described result in not cooling the water to four degrees centigrade (and mixing in fresh water).
The ocean could, in the geologically short term of a mere 50000 years become stratified by thermoclines, and mixing might effectively cease. (Although that too is subject to misinterpretation, as it turns out that life itself mixes the oceans on an order of magnitude nearly similar to that of existing vertical current exchanges)
As in all the questions about climate, much less the interaction of climate and geology, the answer is that we have very little information on the actual nature of the current climate system, and even less about the dynamics of geology. In the short term, we are strongly affecting climate. Short term for climate is 1000 to 10,000 years. Our climate records are inferential and anecdotal, and the century of instrument data we have is entirely limited to the northern hemisphere, until very recently.
We could easily compare our knowledge of climate compared to the needed knowledge for accurate prediction to the knowledge of shepherds in the first millennium and computing trajectories of comets.
But, even if we knew, politics is much more predictable. Those who have the power to affect the process will do nothing.
Tris
Yikes! Goodbye Cuba, Florida and most of the American Southeast. Most of Australia split into two islands. Hardly anything left of the U.K. :eek:
So, I’m gonna rewrite the ad for my house that is on the market (in western PA) to include, “Future Ocean View”.
Except for Scotland. Apparently they’re so tight even rising sea levels can’t waterlog them…
The maps are pretty interesting, but I see no time estimates. Anyone have a projected timeline for total ice melt?
I’d be a little distrustful of those maps. The map of the hundred-metre rise has Lake Superior underwater, yet Wikipedia says its surface is at 180 metres above present sea level.
Just to confuse the issue, a new study finds that an increase in CO2 will result in a net increase in the thickness of the ice sheetsin both Antarctica and Greenland:
I think that’s just Lake Superior being Lake Superior. Only Ontario winds up begin swamped by the Atlantic/Gulf of St Lawrence
Yeah, we have one of these.
My in-laws will need a houseboat, as their entire state (Florida) is pretty much gone.
I can tell you one thing.
If you get close to a 100 (300) meter rise, virtually ALL of Florida will be underwater, and most that by a good margin.
If IRC the highest spot in Florida is about 280 feet, and thats near the southern Alabama border.
Oh, and another thing, the oceans average temp rising just a bit is nearly as bad all that melting ice. Take an ocean thats an average of a few thousand feet thick, warm it a few degrees, and its gonna rise a fair bit that has nothing to do with melting ice.