Antarctica is rising out of the ocean and it could change everything

We all know that climate change is slowly causing massive changes to our world. What you might not know is that those changes are more extensive than just rising sea levels. In fact, research has shown that Antarctica is rising up out of the ocean as it sheds its ice, and the effects on our planet are going to be massive.

The process is what scientists call post-glacial uplift, and a batch of new data gathered by researchers suggests that it could have a major impact on global sea levels going forward. First, it could reduce Antarctica’s overall contribution by up to 40 percent. Or, it could just make things even worse.

A lot of that depends on how much heat-trapping we continue to see and how many fossil fuels we continue to burn, thus melting more of the continent’s ice, causing Antarctica to rise out of the ocean even more. But what spurred the researcher’s observations of Antarctica’s depth in the ocean? Well, over the past several years, millions have experienced rising sea levels reaching close to their homes.

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Image source: Wayne/Adobe

However, Antarctica’s sea level changes have remained stubbornly low, almost as if the continent itself has been rising out of the ocean. And that appears to be exactly what has been happening. Of course, our planet isn’t exactly a perfectly smooth sphere, so different areas are going to experience changes in sea level differently.

But Antarctica appears to be experiencing those changes in a way that just doesn’t add up to the way the planet is shaped. Instead, it appears that as the ice melts in the glacier shelves, Antarctica itself is rising out of the ocean little by little. Of course, there’s still some uncertainty—a lot, in fact—with the model the researchers have created.

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But it does at least give us something to look deeper into so that we can truly understand how climate change continues to change and shape our planet —something we’ve been struggling to do as we also struggle to find ways to mitigate the ongoing global warming issues.

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