• Question: if the ice caps melt, what countries would flood

    Asked by ciara123 to Angela, Gabriele, Karen, Maria, Shane on 12 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Shane Mc Guinness

      Shane Mc Guinness answered on 12 Nov 2013:

      Well, it would be those countries that are not so high. A lot of countries are quite close to the level of the sea so when the ice caps melt and sea level rise, these will be hit. These include Holland here in Europe (which is mostly under sea level) but they currently have lots of sea walls to protect themselves and in the future they’ll be able to afford to build better ones probably. It’s the poorer countries of the world that are flat and close to the sea which will be worst affected I’m afraid. Places like coastal India, Africa and Asia.
      However, don’t believe the movies, this won’t happen in one big wave! It’ll happen very slowly over a hundred years or more. Us humans are pretty good at dealing with change, or “adapting”, so we’ll probably be able to handle it.
      The effects of this sea change might be worse of the atmosphere though, with changes in cloud formation and air movement. But again, we’re really good at dealing with change.

    • Photo: Karen McCarthy

      Karen McCarthy answered on 12 Nov 2013:

      Just to add to Shane’s answer, this is a really neat interactive map from National Geographic, I’ve used it before for science talks and it really makes you think!

      http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/rising-seas/if-ice-melted-map

    • Photo: Angela Stevenson

      Angela Stevenson answered on 13 Nov 2013:

      Great question Ciara! Shane and Karen did a great job at answering your question, so I ll just add this cool fact. Antarctica is the Earth’s main ice-covered landmass, it holds about 90 percent of all the ice on Earth. If all this ice were to melt then sea levels around the world would rise about 61 meters! Yikes! But it’s very very cold in Antarctica (-37°C on average) and most parts of it never go below freezing temperatures, so there’s no danger of all it’s ice melting and eventually flooding us 🙂 Hope that helps!

Comments