For this surface area, about 70 percent is water which is crazy if you think about it. That means the surface area of the oceans can be calculated as:. Imagine this melted ice otherwise known as water spread over the whole area of the oceans. If the ocean was a perfect square, the melted water would be a flat rectangular box with the same area as the ocean and the depth equal to the amount of sea level rise.
To find this rise in water, I just need to take the volume of melted water and divide by the area of the ocean and here you can see why it's nice to have everything in units of meters, m 2 and m 3. OK, now I'm going to reveal my favorite tool for calculations like this—python. Yes, I did all of this with some very short python code.
The best part is that you can change any of my estimates. Just click the "pencil" icon and you can input values that you think are better. I won't be offended or even know. View Iframe URL. So you see how bad this could be.
Even if my estimates are off by a little bit—it seems clear that there could be a very significant sea level rise. That would suck. Note that this is just an approximation. I didn't take into account the loss of land surface area that gets flooded by the rising seas.
This would actually decrease the sea level rise, as it would have a greater area to spread out. But even if you let the water spread over a complete Earth including the land , it would be an increase of 62 meters feet. I guess I should also point out that I ignored the curvature of the Earth and assumed it was a flat plat the flat-Earthers would be happy.
But since the change in sea level is very small compared to the radius of the Earth, I think this approximation is fairly fine. Well, fine as an estimation—not fine as the disaster it would cause. But what about the melting ice at the North Pole? Although there is significant melting , it doesn't contribute to sea level rise.
The big difference is that the Arctic ice is floating while the Antarctic ice is sitting on land. Why does this even matter? I can show you with an example of a classic physics question. Imagine you have a glass of water with a single large ice cube in it. Since the density of solid ice is slightly less than the density of liquid water, the ice floats. Here is a diagram of the floating ice. Why does stuff float? I know this might seem crazy, but it's because of the gravitational force.
Imagine that you have a glass of water without any motion in the cup no currents. You can take a small section of the water in the middle of the cup and look at the forces acting on it. Let's say this is a small cube of water with each side of length s. Since the water block is stationary, the total force on this block must be zero—this is true for any object in static equilibrium.
One force that should obviously be acting on the water block is the downward pulling gravitational force. This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city. Animals Wild Cities This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city Caracals have learned to hunt around the urban edges of Cape Town, though the predator faces many threats, such as getting hit by cars. India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big. Environment Planet Possible India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big Grassroots efforts are bringing solar panels to rural villages without electricity, while massive solar arrays are being built across the country.
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So all of that newly established coastline on the eastern US would be one of the last places you'd want to live. Instead, there would be mass migrations to Canada, Alaska, the Arctic, and even what's left of the Antarctic. And you're right, this is probably never going to happen. After all, there's enough ice right now to cover the entire continent of North America in a sheet a mile thick. So the next time you hear about record-breaking heat or ultra-powerful hurricanes, at least you know that it could be worse.
But scientists estimate that if we don't take action and global temperatures increase by just 1 degree Celsius, the effects of climate change we already see today will be irreversible.
So yes, it could be worse, and it will be if we're not careful. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options.
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