Sea Level In Savannah GA Up 7" Since 2010; Driven By Warmer Gulf Stream, Gravity Effects From Ice Sheet Melt

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First, as ice melts in Greenland or Antarctica, meltwaters spill into the ocean, raising global sea levels everywhere. But, counterintuitively, the coastlines farthest from the ice sheets are hit hardest. That’s because the ice sheets are gigantic — so gigantic, in fact, that they exert a gravitational pull on the ocean. (The Greenland ice sheet weighs approximately 2.7 quadrillion metric tons, equal to about 450 million Great Pyramids of Giza; the Antarctic ice sheet is 10 times heavier.)

Normally, that enormous weight pulls oceans close to the ice sheets, making sea levels around Greenland and Antarctica higher than they would be otherwise. But as the ice melts, that effect lessens. Sea levels close to the ice sheet fall, and sea levels farther away rise. Jerry Mitrovica, a professor of earth sciences at Harvard University and one of the leading experts on melting ice sheets and ocean levels, recalls looking at a plot of sea levels near Greenland. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “It was just an incredible thing to see around this melting ice sheet that sea level change, at least regionally, is dramatically going down.”

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In the Southeast, for example, the land is sinking by about 0.6 inches per decade — which compounds the impact of rising seas. A small portion of this dip comes from the movement of tectonic plates, which are slowly rebounding from the weight of glaciers that laid atop them tens of thousands of years ago. But most of it, researchers say, stems from people pumping water from deep underground to drink or to irrigate crops. “As you withdraw water from an aquifer, you’re basically creating a vacuum,” said Leonard Ohenhen, a postdoctoral researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. “That material can settle down over time.”

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Finally, scientists look at water temperatures and ocean currents. As the planet warms, 90 percent of the added heat goes into the ocean. But — like sea level rise itself — that temperature rise isn’t spread uniformly across the ocean. Some areas get hotter faster than others, and the surging currents wandering across the globe can carry warm water from one place to the next. Salinity can also change the density of ocean water and, by extension, the sea level. In general, the effect of temperature on sea level rise is simple: added heat expands ocean waters. Deep ocean waters play a particular role — as they expand, they cause sea levels to rise out in the open ocean. That expanded water then surges onto the coasts, spiking sea levels along beaches and shorelines.

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https://wapo.st/4gMRBdV

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2024/us-south-sea-level-rise-climate-change/?itid=sf_climate_climate_climate-front-top-table_p001_f001