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Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumGlacial Rebound: The Not So solid earth
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/glacial-rebound-the-not-so-solid-earthWhen you fill a sink, the water rises at the same rate to the same height in every corner. That's not the way it works with our rising seas.
According to the 23-year record of satellite data from NASA and its partners, the sea level is rising a few millimeters a year -- a fraction of an inch. If you live on the U.S. East Coast, though, your sea level is rising two or three times faster than average. If you live in Scandinavia, it's falling. Residents of China's Yellow River delta are swamped by sea level rise of more than nine inches (25 centimeters) a year.
These regional differences in sea level change will become even more apparent in the future, as ice sheets melt. For instance, when the Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is totally gone, the average global sea level will rise four feet. But the East Coast of the United States will see an additional 14 to 15 inches above that average.
Tides, winds and ocean currents play a role in these regional differences, but an increasingly important mover and shaker is the solid Earth itself. Global warming is not just affecting the surface of our world; it's making the Earth move under our feet.
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Glacial Rebound: The Not So solid earth (Original Post)
sue4e3
Jan 2016
OP
pscot
(21,024 posts)1. 25 centimeters is 10 inches
that seems unrealistic.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,316 posts)2. Due to groundwater extraction for fish farms:
Groundwater extraction for fish farms can cause land to sink at rates of a quarter-metre a year, according to a study of Chinas Yellow River delta1. The subsidence is causing local sea levels to rise nearly 100 times faster than the global average.
Global sea levels are rising at about 3 millimetres a year owing to warming waters and melting ice. But some places are seeing a much faster rise mainly because of sinking land. Bangkok dropped by as much as 12 centimetres a year in the 1980s thanks to groundwater pumping. Oil fields near Houston, Texas, experienced a similar drop during the 1920s because of oil extraction. Deltas can also sink as old river sediments compact under their own weight and water carrying replacement sediments is held back by dams or diverted for irrigation. You can get crazy rates of sea-level rise, says James Syvitski, a geologist at the University of Colorado Boulder and a co-author of the study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters1.
The researchers found that parts of the Yellow River delta are dropping by up to 25 centimetres a year, probably because of groundwater extraction for onshore fish tanks. The link between aquaculture and subsidence has attracted little international notice. This is a new one on me, says Stephen Brown, a fisheries scientist at the US National Marine Fisheries Service in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are concerned about the effect of sea-level rise on fish; not the other way around, he says.
http://www.nature.com/news/fish-farms-cause-relative-sea-level-rise-1.13569
Global sea levels are rising at about 3 millimetres a year owing to warming waters and melting ice. But some places are seeing a much faster rise mainly because of sinking land. Bangkok dropped by as much as 12 centimetres a year in the 1980s thanks to groundwater pumping. Oil fields near Houston, Texas, experienced a similar drop during the 1920s because of oil extraction. Deltas can also sink as old river sediments compact under their own weight and water carrying replacement sediments is held back by dams or diverted for irrigation. You can get crazy rates of sea-level rise, says James Syvitski, a geologist at the University of Colorado Boulder and a co-author of the study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters1.
The researchers found that parts of the Yellow River delta are dropping by up to 25 centimetres a year, probably because of groundwater extraction for onshore fish tanks. The link between aquaculture and subsidence has attracted little international notice. This is a new one on me, says Stephen Brown, a fisheries scientist at the US National Marine Fisheries Service in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are concerned about the effect of sea-level rise on fish; not the other way around, he says.
http://www.nature.com/news/fish-farms-cause-relative-sea-level-rise-1.13569
pscot
(21,024 posts)3. Ah so
That could be noted as a sunk cost then; irrecoverable.