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Sea level rise, explained

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Greenhouse gases released in the atmosphere end up most of the time in the oceans and seas. Scientists then chose to call those weather and climate systems, climate change.

Those changes affect mostly the rising of warmer oceans level and, in the last 25 years, water has flooded part of the coasts.

Glaciers are supposed to naturally melt in the summer, inducing the level of seas and oceans to rise. But the snow made in the winter from the seawater is normally enough to balance the level of the water. Recently, an imbalance was created by the new temperatures. In the summer, the heat is melting the glaciers faster and faster, and in the winter the snowfalls are barely still happening like before, not producing enough ice.

The ice sheets are actually melting along the glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica. The last one is also becoming unstable and that is why scientists are worrying. The fact, that those two big ice sheets are moving quickly and melting too fast, can be quite dangerous for the sea level.

The consequences of the rise in sea level are well known by the public eye, because, and most of the time, they are resulting in death. For example, hurricanes and typhoons are so destructive and huge that the rain and the storm they provide can easily erase everything they come in contact with. In the Atlantic hurricanes, half of the casualties are caused by storms. The other consequences can be the flooding of the land or habitats that are not far from the sea, the destruction of agricultural soil and the loss of animal habitats.

Tylwyth Eldar, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons