Climate Crisis: Our Oceans are Rising, Part 1 of 2

In this series we will learn about the effects of the climate change crisis on our oceans, how this affects our world today and what we can do to reverse the damaging impacts. For the past 50 years, the ocean has been absorbing 90% of all the heat generated by global warming. Unfortunately, with the ever-increasing concentration of greenhouse gases, global temperatures have continued to rise, and much of the excess heat is being trapped in the upper levels of the ocean. This is causing the water to become warmer, and to expand, therefore leading to a consistent rise in sea levels. However, the sea level doesn’t only rise due to the expansion of sea water. It also rises as a result of water runoff from the melting of ice sheets and glaciers at both the North and South Poles. The melting of Antarctica’s ice sheet is currently responsible for almost 25% of global sea level rise. If it were to melt completely, it could raise sea levels by as much as 58.3 meters! This is what makes Antarctica the most critical indicator of how quickly our oceans will rise over the coming decades and centuries. However, the effect of this less-than-one-cm increase each year has had a disastrous effect on our world’s low-lying coastal habitats. The esteemed climate scientist, Professor Andrew Shepherd, from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom stated, “As a rule of thumb, for every centimeter rise in global sea level, another 6 million people are exposed to coastal flooding around the planet.”