Posted on 05/14/2009 2:09:42 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CHICAGO (AFP) – While a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet will have devastating impacts on global sea levels, a study published Thursday found the anticipated impact has been seriously overestimated.
Using new measures of the ice sheet's geometry, British and Dutch researchers predict its collapse would cause sea levels to rise by 3.2 meters (11 feet) rather than previous estimates of five to seven meters.
However, the study published in the journal Science found that even a one meter rise in sea levels would be significant enough to weaken the Earth's gravity field in the southern hemisphere and affect the Earth's rotation.
That rotational shift would cause water to pile up in the northern oceans and could result in dramatic regional differences in sea levels, with the largest rise on the east and west coast of the United States.
"The pattern of sea level rise is independent of how fast or how much of the (Western Antarctic Ice Sheet) WAIS collapses," said lead author Jonathan Bamber of the University of Bristol in England.
"Even if the WAIS contributed only a meter of sea level rise over many years, sea levels along North America's shorelines would still increase 25 percent more than the global average."
Antarctica holds about nine times the volume of ice as Greenland and is considered a sleeping giant when it comes to sea levels.
The western ice sheet is of particular concern because enormous sections sit in inland basins on bedrock that is entirely below sea level.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Seas don’t rise, land sinks ...
The ice down South will melt, raising the sea levels, weakening gravity, affecting Earth's rotation, so the water will "pile up" in the North.
I've seen some horsesh!t in my day, but this takes the cake.
Doomed.
Minorities and women hurt worst.
Bush’s fault
Sort a like the swine flu...
know anybody that wants to buy some 20 foot poles? ;-)
I guess I won’t be neeeeding them
They're grasping at straws. I'm thinking they are desperate because the masses are starting to wise up to the AGW scam.
And here I thought Belgians were taller ..... :)
I was thinking we should anticipate a potential rise in sea levels by digging a canal from the Atlantic to that gigantic depression in N. Africa (forget the name). We could generate HUGH amounts of hyropower, irrigate the desert with desalinated water, and open up HUGH swaths of land for agriculture along all of the world’s shallow sea beaches as the sea level sinks. I LOVE macroengineering!
Doesn’t ice take up more space by volume than water? That’s why pipes containing water crack when they freeze solid. So when it melts, shouldn’t the sea levels go down. If it’s really melting at all.
they report the west antartica is melting but ignore that eastern antartica ice is growing
Antartica melts and grow and change shape. This is normal. Thats like treating the tides level increasing during the night with alarm
Whether or to what extent that is happening, and whether or to what extent it is being balanced by growth of land ice elsewhere, is the subject of debate.
But this will have a positive effect- Loads of fat people will be wanting to move down to Australia because they will weigh less there and the gravitational effect will even out once enough obese people are across the equator.
study physics, involving rotational bodies, temperture differnyials, and landmass sea syidied, read a book!
However, the ice in Antarctica has been frozen for millions of years. I'm not immediately concerned.
Wow... Never realized that melted ice water would flow from below-sea-level bedrock into the sea! Quick - someone tell the Dutch; this could solve their dike problems!
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