Read More. Coastal states like Florida, and low-lying island nations are particularly vulnerable. Just 3 feet of sea level rise could put large areas of coastline underwater. Forty percent of the US population resides in coastal areas that are vulnerable to sea level rise. Areas losing the most ice are located in southern Greenland and along the margin of the ice sheet. Greenland is currently losing billion tons of ice per year.
That's enough ice to pack into 6, Empire State Buildings. Ice is melting seven times faster now than it was in the s. The amount of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has been decreasing in recent decades.
Permafrost in Arctic tundra has been thawing rapidly too. And warming is causing changes to Arctic ecosystems and human communities. As seasonal snow melts away, darker core ice is exposed, which then melts and adds to sea level rise.
The Danish government data shows that the island has lost more than bn tons of ice since the start of June this year and while the severity of melting is less than in — when 11bn tons of ice was lost in a single day — the area affected is much larger in A research paper found the Greenland ice sheet could add anything between 5cm and 33cm to global sea levels by the end of the century. One important thing that will happen is groundwater contamination.
If the sea level is rising, there is going to be infiltration of saltwater in groundwater reserves further inland. Welcome to Future Earth , where Inverse forecasts years of possibilities, challenges, and who will lead the way.
Another thing already happening is that thermohaline circulation may be affected. Also called the Great Conveyor Belt, this moves heat around from the equator to higher latitudes. We may already see a slowdown of that circulation because we're putting too much freshwater into the Arctic.
So if that happens there would be no more Gulf Stream. Europe will be as cold as Montreal.
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