Eli5: Do ships cause the ocean to be higher than it normally would be?

385 viewsOtherPlanetary Science

I’m not sure if this is a shower thought and I’m sure I sound like a complete tool, but thinking about it on a small scale makes a lot more sense. It’s like if you fill a bathtub to the brim and then climb in, the water will overflow. I have to imagine in SOME WAY having hundreds of thousands of ships in the ocean has to be affecting the water level. Is this already a thing or do the people reading this want what I’ve been smoking? 😂

In: Planetary Science

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Yes, ships in the ocean displace water, causing the shorelines to rise.

But the ocean is big. Like really, really, really, really big. So big, that despite the large amount of ships that humanity has floating around in the big blue it only increases sea level by a micron or two – aka millionths of a meter.

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