Scientists from NASA said that the rise in the level of the World Ocean is already underway, and that humanity may face an even more dire scenario than the currently popular models of global warming predict.
- The rise in sea level by a third depends on the fact that the heated water increases in volume, - said Stephen Nerem, an employee of the NASA group for studying sea level changes at the University of Colorado. - The remaining two-thirds comes from the melting of glaciers.
The data collected by NASA satellites show that the water level is now rising by 1.9 millimeters per year. However, these numbers are relative. For example, in 2012, the UN Commission on Climate Change referred to satellite data showing that the oceans rise by 3.2 millimeters each year.
At the same time, glaciologists believe that global warming scenarios do not take into account details that can accelerate the rise in water levels.
Recently, unique photos of ice melting off the coast of Greenland were published
“The calculations only take into account the rise in temperature on the surface of glaciers, but not the rapid melting, when huge masses of ice are in the ocean,” said Eric Reno, a glaciologist at the University of California.
- The part of the Greenland glacier Jakobshavn, which broke away from the main massif in the summer, has an area of 12 square kilometers, and all this amount of ice melted in the ocean, and at different depths.
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According to him, if the entire Jakobshavn glacier slid into the water, then one glacier would be enough to raise the level of the World Ocean by 50 centimeters.
Thus, the researchers expect that the melting of glaciers, the exact volume of which cannot be calculated, plus the warming of the water and its expansion, will lead to the flood faster than expected. Recall, according to the calculations of UN experts, in the next century, the level of the World Ocean will rise by 6.4 meters.