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Sea Levels and Global Warming


            There are several aspects about the effects of global warming on the environment. What is global warming? Global warming is the process of gradual growth of average annual temperature of the atmosphere of the Earth and World Ocean. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "Earth's average temperature has risen by 1.4 Fahrenheit over the past century, and is projected to rise another 2 to 11.5 Fahrenheit over the next hundred years.".
             As a result of global warming, the expansion of ocean water is increasing, argues James Hansen, a physicist, an astronomer, and the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, in his article Global Warming Threatens Massive Sea Level Rise. He states where the sea level has a rising steady pace, the increase by 3 centimeters; double the moderate rate in the last decade, was significant. However, Richard D. Terry will not agree to this statement. Terry, a marine geologist and former consultant to the U.S. Defense Department, has a different opinion. In his article Global Warming Will Not Cause Sea Levels to Rise he believes that tides, which are gauges of ocean levels, are hard to measure and compare. "Therefore", he explains, "no completely satisfactory data exist to measure or compare relative sea levels.".
             In addition, Hansen provides the fact;" Greenland's summer melt" has increased from 450,000 square kilometers to more than 600,000 square kilometers which is an effect of global warming with rising temperature and a cause of local warming of 7.2 Fahrenheit over Greenland. Terry, on the other hand, claims that rising temperature will increase evaporation and leads to more ice. As the temperature heats up, water vapors, developing more clouds and more clouds would cause the air temperature to fall which accumulates in snow fall and that would mean more ice.
             Nevertheless Hansen shows us his concerns with the melting of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland, with each losing about 150 cubic kilometers of ice per year, according to the gravity measurement by GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellites.


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