Will the world soon to be under the sea? Scientists fear the worst
Melting glaciers are accelerating, lightening the weight of the ice on the continental crust. Result? Antarctica, much like Greenland, is rising.
The melting of the ice cap, a real time bomb for scientists, is causing Antarctica to rise by 5cm per year. The state of the polar regions, according to several studies on the subject, is rather alarming! Futura-Sciences also specifies that the Antarctic ice alone represents by far the largest reserve of fresh water on the planet. Total melting of the Antartica ice would therefore cause a rise in sea level of... 60 meters. Rising sea levels are one of the greatest threats to the planet, and more particularly, to the world's coastal areas.
The effects of the melting of this polar ice cap would be absolutely disastrous, especially for the many inhabited islands that emerge only a few meters above the sea, Futura-Sciences emphasizes.
But..., while the scenario is written from an angle of the worst case scenario, it could well be that a widespread physical phenomenon comes to shatter the ambient pessimism. According to a recent study published in the American journal Science Advances, the uplift of the Atlantic (5cm per year), also called "post-glacial rebound", is none other than Archimedes' principle. The continental crust, gradually shedding the weight of the glaciers, rises. Below, it is pushed by "the elastic mantle which always tends towards an isostatic equilibrium."
If this uplift of the continental crust of Antarctica is worrying, it can have an impact on the rise in water levels. By carrying out several simulations and modelling over the next 500 years, resreachers were able to demonstrate that the phenomenon could shelter the ice from the warm waters of the ocean and thus limit its melting. The rise in sea levels, in this case, would only reach +1.7 metres in 2,500. Be careful, this scenario only holds up under one condition: reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore, limiting global warming. Otherwise, sea levels would be +19.5 metres in 2500.
(MH with AsD - Futura-Sciences - Illustration: Pixabay)