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Pastimes : The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread.
QCOM 159.42-1.2%Jan 16 9:30 AM EST
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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (1056)11/21/1999 1:47:00 PM
From: Clarksterh  Read Replies (1) of 12247
 
Maurice - if the Arctic ice has lost 40% of its volume, how come the sea level hasn't risen around the world?

Because the Arctic Ice Sheet is floating already, whereas the Antarctic ice is not. And, the Antarctic is not melting nearly as fast, partly (largely?) because there is no high heat capacity convection to melt it.

Clark

PS The reason that melting ice does not raise the level of the water in which it floats is Archimedes Law - a floating object displaces exactly the same weight of liquid as the weight of the floating object. Thus, as the ice melts it exactly fills the hole that would be left if you removed the ice. So unless the ice gains mass as it melts, ... . (Note that there is probably some miniscule effect due to salinity - salt water is less dense than pure water - but it very small.)

PPS FWIW, the best guess of archeologists is that the climate changes very fast when it changes and the best guess is that it appears to be driven largely by ocean currents flipping into a new mode in response to some comparatively small trigger. Given that our models for this are abysmal at this point, I agree that it is hard to predict the climate changes resulting from more CO2 - but it also means that the changes can be substantially larger than you might expect.
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