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The arctic ice sheet floats. Greenland is an island and Antarctica a continent, both of them surrounded by a little floating ice. Melting that ice shifts a km-
by Arnt 6y ago
The arctic ice sheet floats. Greenland is an island and Antarctica a continent, both of them surrounded by a little floating ice.
Melting that ice shifts a km-deep layer of ice from a fixed position above nearby sea level to being part of the liquid ocean. This means that it doesn't exert any gravitational pull on the ocean nearby, so the water-covered part of the globe becomes a little bit more spherical. Not much more spherical: The article says 30-50m on the coast of Greenland, which is a very small fraction of the earth's radius.
The 30-50m column of water is distributed elsewhere.
- Arnt 6y agoReplying to myself, this implies that near Greenland, the gravitational effect of the ice cap should be ~30 times as big as the moon's (which causes a tide of a little over a meter). Which doesn't seem horribly implausible.