If global warming causes glaciers to melt, how does that increase the water level if there is still the same amount of water, but in different forms (liquid and solid)?
Like if you have a glass of water with ice cubes in it filled to the brim, and the ice melts, the glass doesn’t overflow…
In: Chemistry
Definition of glaciers is a huge chunk of ice on land, not in the sea at all. Sea-ice is the name given to ice shelves which sit in the sea at the North Pole and around the edges of Antarctica and Greenland. The polar ice caps is what we call the huge masses of ice on land on Greenland (north) and Antarctica (south).
Most of the sea level rise we have experienced in recent decades has actually been from the thermal expansion of water as the surface layer of the sea all around the world warms up slightly. Only in the last few years has the contribution of glacial melt water overtaken thermal expansion of seawater in terms of how much is going towards rising sea levels.
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