The human population constantly leave elements of their existence in the nature of the world around us. Our footprints are all around us and we constantly leave them. Geophysicists have put together a “global-scale” image of the secondary effects of the melting glaciers on the planet’s sea levels.
Sea levels have been rising and falling at rapid rates, but not evenly around the globe. Scientists have started to piece together the puzzle of this phenomenon. Ice sheets on planet Earth, being denser than water, exert a gravitational pull on all water bodies in their proximity. Similarly to the way that the moon exerts a noticeable gravitational pull on the water creating tides, except at a much less dramatic level,glaciers pull on the water around them creating an elevated sea level at their edges. As the glaciers melt in consequence of the further opening of the ozone hole (our footprint), they become less massive therefore exerting a smaller gravitational pull on the rest of the water and lowering the sea level. Simultaneously, the land rises up because the ice does not weigh it down so much. This creates an even further drop in sea level.
The loss of mass changes Earth’s gravitational field causing the water from the glaciers and ocean water to move away towards faraway coastlines; the resulting pattern of sea-level rise is the fingerprint of melting from that particular ice sheet or glacier. In some parts of the world therefore the sea level will rise and in others it is prone to decreasing. Most of the burden of rising sea levels is taken on by the middle and lower latitudes.
To read more about this phenomenon visit scientificamerican.com under the Earth and Sustainability tab.
