Changing shorelines due to ice sheet meltdown

While there is still a lot debate going on about whether or not we are entering a period of global climate change or not there is no denying that we are experiencing unprecedented; in our lifetimes at least, melting of both the Arctic and Antarctic ice fields. As a result the question of what kind of effect this melting is going to have on our shorelines around the world is being studied by scientists with some pretty interesting results. The one area being looked at right now is the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the effects of its current collapse.

Previously scientists have felt that the effects of a polar melting would be even distributed around the world but this might change after people read the new research being conducted by physics grad student Natalya Gomez , geophysicist Jerry Mitrovica and geoscientist Peter Clark. The scientists suggest that this view might be too simplistic

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.

Source: Treehugger

If you are interested in this sort of stuff you can check out the Center for Remote Sensing of the Ice Sheets for detailed maps of the areas of the world that could be directly affected by this ice sheet melting which is where this map comes from. This would be the southern coastal area with 6 meters of flooding due to ice sheet melting.

Here is the news footage of a collapsing ice sheet due to melting

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