Canada’s melting glaciers raising sea levels

Recent research conducted by NASA scientists says Canada’s ice caps and glaciers have a large influence on Earth’s changing climate and are already causing the global sea level to rise.

Canada’s Arctic is covered by approximately 150,000 square kilometers of ice. While this land area is tiny compared to Antarctica’s 113.5 million square kilometers, and Greenland’s 1.7 million square kilometers of ice coverage, it is still quite significant, says NASA.

Waleed Abdalati, head of the Cryospheric Sciences Branch at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center published research recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research showing that Canada’s Arctic ice is already one of the most important sources of global changes in sea levels.

Abdalati and his colleagues say Canada’s Arctic ice is important because the huge area covered by these ice caps and the dramatic changes that have taken place in the Arctic climate in recent years.

Over the next century, melting glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and Antarctica are expected to raise global sea levels by 20 to 40 centimeters.