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the ice is melting

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the seas are rising little by little in

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most parts of the world the ocean is

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overtaking the land most of us don't

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think much about sea level rise but it's

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one of the biggest signs that humans are

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affecting the Earth's climate and it's

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something worth watching so the big

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question is are we facing a doom and

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gloom scenario I prefer not to think

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about climate change in global warming

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in terms of doom and gloom scenarios so

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much as a change in our planet our

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planet is definitely changing and we're

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definitely causing it so we're gonna

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have to learn to deal with some of these

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changes but in addition we're gonna have

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to learn how to make a slightly smaller

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sea level is rising effectively because

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of global warming as the planet heats up

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then two things happen to the ocean one

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is that the temperature of the water

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increases and as that happens the water

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actually expands and takes up more room

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the other thing that happens is that ice

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that was on land in the form of glaciers

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and ice sheets begins to melt and as

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that runs off into the ocean it

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increases the water in the ocean and it

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actually raises sea level as well it's

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important to understand how the world's

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ice sheets form how they change over

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time and how fast they are moving into

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the sea

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that's where researchers like NASA's

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Laura Koenig come in she recently spent

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three months in Greenland studying the

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composition of those ice sheets all ice

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sheets and glaciers start a snowfall

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those tiny flakes get compressed by the

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weight of more snow above and eventually

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become dense masses of ice what we're

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seeing right now on the ice sheets and

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with glaciers is that they are shrinking

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in size and as glaciers on land are

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shrinking overall that contributes a

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little bit to sea-level rise and we are

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worried as we see warming over the ice

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sheets and increase melting over the ice

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sheets that they are going to start

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contributing much more to sea-level rise

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two thirds of the fresh water on Earth

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is frozen in the world's ice fields if

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that ice melts Seas will rise if all of

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that ice were to melt sea level would

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rise worldwide by 70 meters no one

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expects all of that ice to melt anytime

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soon but even the meter of sea level

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rise that many scientists predict in the

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next century could have dramatic

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consequences

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even though the polar regions seem very

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far from a lot of people's day-to-day

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life they are very important because

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they are the regions that cool our earth

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and as they change they're going to

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cause larger changes throughout the rest

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of the globe a lot of people live in

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coastal areas coastal places that have

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beaches as sea level rises then beaches

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begin to erode and we begin to lose

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wetlands a lot of different ecologically

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sensitive regions lie along the

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coastline and as sea level rises these

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get flooded the ecosystems are forced to

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change and so all this can have big

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consequences for people and especially

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people who live near the coast as the

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great ice sheets in Antarctica and

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Greenland began to melt and break up due

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to global warming we really might

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experience very rapid sea level rise

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three or four times as fast as the rate

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that we see today so predicting this

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rate out into the future is very tricky

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because we really don't know when the

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ice sheets might break up and how fast

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they will when they do so predicting