Local Sea Level Rise- one of the trickiest predictions, part 2: Glacial reboundIn the first post of

Local Sea Level Rise- one of the trickiest predictions, part 2: Glacial reboundIn the first post of this series we mentioned that the melting of the large Greenlandic and Antarctic Ice Sheets could actually result in lower sea levels around those regions. In the first post (http://on.fb.me/1C2B9Lx) we explained how gravity can influence sea level rise. In this second series post, I will explain the ‘glacial rebound’ occurrence.Glacial rebound affects areas that currently have, or once had large ice sheets or glaciers covering them. In the last glacial maximum, ice sheets covered much of North America (Laurentide Ice Sheet), Northern Europe (Weichselian Ice Sheet) and South America (The Patagonian Ice Sheet). The only current ice sheets are the Greenland Ice Sheet and Antarctic Ice Sheet. These huge ice sheets are so heavy that they actually sink the earth’s crust beneath them. As they melt and lose mass, the earth begins to rise again, a result of the reduction of downward pressure. Many locations are still experiencing this glacial rebound from the previous ice age, for example parts of Canada and Scandinavia are rising which ‘offsets’ sea level rise in those areas. On the contrary, places such as the south of England and Chesapeake Bay are sinking, as the land was squeezed upwards from the downward pressure of the ice sheets nearby, exacerbating the effects of sea level rise. An extreme example of this has been reported from Finland, where researchers from the Finnish Meteorological Institute predicted a 29cm sea level rise in the Gulf of Finland and a 27cm fall in the Bay of Bothnia by 2100! In the Bay of Bothnia, uplift is estimated to be up to 9.9mm/year.The image is from Ilulissat Isfjord in Greenland where the Jakobshavn Glacier calves into, producing around 10% of the icebergs from Greenland (and possibly the source of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic).Image credit: My own.References/Further reading:IPCC on sea level rise: http://bit.ly/1CrvtOkJohansson, M. M., Pellikka, H., Kahma, K. K., & Ruosteenoja, K. (2014). Global sea level rise scenarios adapted to the Finnish coast. Journal of Marine Systems, 129, 35-46. -- source link

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