Should residents of the Eastern seaboard have concern about sea level rising?
Background Information for Students: The greatest amount of this freshwater (77%) is found in ice sheets. Ice sheets are large, thick layers of ice that reside on relatively flat land masses that play a role in global sea level change. The two major landforms that are ice sheet territories are Greenland and Antarctica. Ice sheets cover the majority of these regions. But this has not always been the case. At one time, most of Europe, Asia, and much of North America, extending as far as Pennsylvania was covered by ice sheets. In periods of warming, these ice sheets have melted almost completely away with sea level rising as much as 125 meters. Ice sheets grow larger when the temperature is below freezing for long periods of time, tens of thousands of years. The ice sheets lose mass, when the temperatures remain above freezing for long periods of time. The term mass balance deals with the growth and melting of ice sheets. This factor governs the development and decay of ice sheets. By kno
