Wharfie, homeopathic sea level rise is not sea level rise. 17 cm over 100 years is not enough to put the frighteners on Venice, let alone places like Tuvalu.
When you can talk in metres instead of millimetres, then we are getting somewhere.
One heavy rainfall and sea level goes up more than you are talking about.
Perhaps you don't know that although water "finds its own level", sea level rise is not uniform around the world.
Ocean circulation from when the Gulf Stream plunges down in the Arctic to when it has all reappeared and is ready to go down again is something like 1,500 years. So sea levels are a function of deep ocean temperatures which were established back in the little ice age era when it was brrrrr.......
Sea level rise now is due to the end of the little ice age, not CO2 emitted last week or a decade or 5 ago.
Perhaps you know that water density is maximum at 4 degrees, not at zero. That has implications for ice melting, and convection currents. As the Gulf Stream flows north, losing heat by evaporation, conduction and radiation, it reaches 4 degrees, maximum density, and sinks. Salt concentration also determines what sinks and what floats - pure water melted ice is low density, cold salt water is high density. Actually, I don't know the temperature of the sinking Gulf Stream - maybe it's a bit warmer than 4 degrees. Google probably knows. Here's a bit of guff about it: whoi.edu
Unfortunately for your theory, evaporation, transportation, crystalisation, precipitation and solidification in Antarctica are removing and storing umpty megatons of water in Antarctica which is lowering sea levels as fast as the end of the little ice age is raising them. So, paradoxically in your theory, as the air warms, sea levels fall....
Mqurice |
