Affection of the Rising of the Sea Level on Global Warming Research Paper

Affection of the Rising of the Sea Level on Global Warming - Research Paper Example The controversial issues include among others the causes of increased temperatures in the recent years and mostly due to human activity. Various questions are raised during research on global warming, which include if the warming is not planned for or it is normal within the climatic changes, whether human beings have significantly contributed to this or if the increase is completely or partially an artifact of poor measurements (Archer 17). Also controversy over estimates of climate sensitivity, predictions of more warming and the outcomes of global warming has been rife among scientists’ assessment reports (Weart 14). Human activities continue to affect the content of the atmosphere especially through gas emissions from green houses and aerosols generated from various human activities, and this keeps on changing the atmosphere in a manner that is most likely to affect the climate. Thus it is deemed that natural factors contributing to global warming are very small as compare d to activities that people engage in top change atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. Rising of the Sea Level The warming of the atmosphere has resulted to higher sea level due to the fact that land and lower atmosphere of a warmer climate result to heat being channeled into the oceans (Neumann, Yohe, Nicholla and Manion 12). Heating of materials leads to their expansion which is referred to as thermal expansion, thus the transfer of heat results to the expansion of sea water, which results to a rise in sea level. Warm temperatures might result to the following effects on the earth’s surface’s natural resources, in the ice lands and oceans. When non-polar glaciers melt, they release water might flow into the ocean thus contributing to a sea-level rise. Glaciers are highly sensitive to change in climate and, therefore, melt at a very fast rate and the water flows to oceans and the effect is increase in sea levels (FEMA 10). Ice increases from snowfall and is b alanced by ice loss from melting and the discharging of glaciers in the Greenland (Archer 38). Forecasts show that increase in melting from higher temperatures will cause an increase in precipitation. Thus, the changes in the ice balance will add water to the ocean, hence contributing to rise in sea levels. Almost all of Antarctica is covered by a sheet of ice, which is 2.5 kilometers thick and if the ice covering Antarctica was to melt, then there would be an over 60 meters rise in the sea levels. However, increase of a few degrees in the Antarctic would not change the melting point of ice since it is so cold there and extremely high temperatures will melt down the ice. Though thermal expansion is not an obvious process than melting ice, weather professionals argue that it remains a major contributor of projected sea-level rise in the 21st century. It has been difficult for scientists to be precise with sea-level forecasts since there are a number of uncertainties. The first one is greenhouse gas concentrations and scientists agree that depending on the levels of increase in these gases will determine the future rise in atmospheric temperatures and consequently sea levels. However this depends on a number of factors, for example, growth in population, use of energy and development of new technologies. Climate sensitivity, which refers to the level of atmospheric warming that result from the increasing carbon dioxide in the air, is another factor (Houghton 48). This is significant enough to be regarded as a source of uncertainty in the forecast of long-term climate change, as the levels of carbon dioxide are bound to change with time. Another factor is ocean heat exchange, where there is heat movement between