Melting icecaps, glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet

The loss of glaciers and ice caps during this century may be responsible for up to 60% of the rise in sea level, which is between 10 and 25 inches; if they were to melt completely, the water level rise of one meter would. Here are the results reported in the journal Science by an international team of scientists whose findings present a challenge to the general opinion among specialists, that the loss of ice on land there (in Antarctica and Greenland) would responsible for the rise of the ocean.

A estimates of sea level rise due to contributions from glaciers and ice caps in this century, underline Meier and colleagues, we must increase the rise due to thermal expansion of ocean water, which can be doubled. The scientists also point out that a rise in sea level of 30 centimeters assumed, as a global average, the flooding of a coastal strip of about thirty meters. One hundred million people live in the territories that would be submerged if the ocean rise about three feet.