• Question: What would happen if all the ice melted in Antarctica and the North Pole

    Asked by anon-190765 to Matt, Maia, Lyndsay, Liam, Dionne, Brendan on 7 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Liam Taylor

      Liam Taylor answered on 7 Nov 2018:

      Love this question! If all of the ice melted everywhere on Earth, sea levels would rise by around 70 metres. That would put most of the UK underwater! There is soooo much ice in the world though that this is unlikely to happen in the next 1000 years, even with climate change. We are seeing sea levels rising and scientists usually look at what will happen to seas by the end of the century. We currently predict that there will be between 50 cm and 1 metre of global sea-level rise in the next 80 years.

    • Photo: Dionne Turnbull

      Dionne Turnbull answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      Great question! Even just 1 metre sea rise in the next 80 years is a pretty scary thought – that will be a lot of land lost.

    • Photo: Brendan Marrinan

      Brendan Marrinan answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      Interesting fact, if the north pole melted this wouldn’t have an impact on global sea levels. There is no land underneath the north pole so if it melted it wouldn’t make the sea level rise. The problem is where the “ice shelves” on Greenland and Antarctica (south) melt because these add a lot of water to the seas. Liam is right we are looking at relatively low level sea lever rise over the next 100 years, but this will have a huge impact on coastal places (like Bournemouth, Blackpool and Bangladesh).

      Another bit of science: in the past (1000s of years ago) there have been times when the temperature has changed very quickly because of lots of different factors (volcanoes, ice melting, forests, etc) which have led to large sea level rise and sea level fall.

    • Photo: Matt Bower

      Matt Bower answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      Cant really add to the answers already given ….I’ll just get my wellies.

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