Expert: Seas to rise at varying rates under global warming
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2009-01-14

BEIJING, Jan. 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Sea levels will rise at varying rates around the world because of a quirk of the earth's gravity linked to global warming, according to a latest study by David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey as quoted by media reports Wednesday.

"Everyone thinks sea level rises the same around the world," David Vaughan, a leading glaciologist, said at the Rothera Base on the Antarctic Peninsula. "But it doesn't".

Rises could vary by tens of centimetres from region to region if seas gain by an average of one metre by 2100 as temperatures rise, he said.

Big ice sheets on Antarctica and on Greenland have a gravitational pull that lifts the seas around them -- water levels around Antarctica, for instance, are higher than if the frozen continent were an open ocean, Vaughan said.

As ice thaws, Antarctica would get smaller and its gravitational tug would diminish. In some places around the continent, the level of the Southern Ocean might even drop in spite of a flood of fresh water into the oceans.

The effect means that seas will paradoxically rise least where thawing ice pours into the sea and most further away from the point of melt, he said.

Vaughan said, "Ice lost from Antarctica has a bigger impact on European sea level rise than ice lost from the European Alps."

(Agencies)

Editor: Wang Hongjiang