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Study: Antarctic Sea-Level Rising Faster Than Global Rate

An anonymous reader writes with this bit of good news for everyone who is waiting for their homes to one day be on the beach. Melting ice is fuelling sea-level rise around the coast of Antarctica, a new report in Nature Geoscience finds. Near-shore waters went up by about 2mm per year more than the general trend for the Southern Ocean as a whole in the period between 1992 and 2011. Scientists say the melting of glaciers and the thinning of ice shelves are dumping 350 billion tonnes of additional water into the sea annually. This influx is warming and freshening the ocean, pushing up its surface. "Freshwater is less dense than salt water and so in regions where an excess of freshwater has accumulated we expect a localized rise in sea level," explained Dr Craig Rye from the University of Southampton, UK, and lead author on the new journal paper.

3 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. Re:unfair policy by itzly · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Funny how you react to a comment about Arctic ice with a study of Antarctic ice.

  2. Re:What will it take? by zr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    the next story on slashdot—on iCloud nude pics leakage—collected more comments. ..i'm sorry to disappoint you but it really is not more complex than that..

  3. Re:unfair policy by curmudgeon99 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here's the problem with that line of reasoning. If--as you say--the entire Climate Change thing is bogus and the insurance companies are using it to raise premiums--where is the free market? Where is the one insurance company bucking the crowd? Surely, if this is a big myth, there has to be at least one big insurance company willing to sell cheap insurance. They could make a killing, were it true.

    The only problem with your theory is the missing contrarian. No insurance company is willing to buck the science. Not one.