What are the implications of climate change for sea level rise?
Remember that the thermal properties of water are exceptional with a high heat capacity. This makes water masses behave as energy accumulators and, therefore, have the capacity to produce changes.
Does the rise in water temperature have an impact?
There is 1,39000000·109 km3 of water on Earth, mostly in seas and oceans.
We know that the Earth’s radius is 6,371 km, so, if we consider that it is spherical, we can calculate the planet’s surface area as:
S total = 4·Π·r2 = 510064471.9 km2
We also know that approximately 71% of the surface area corresponds to seas and oceans, which is why
S oceans = 0.71 * S total = 362145775 km2
PROBLEM
If the oceans were a large parallelepiped-shaped pool (with the volume V of water and the surface area Soceans we just calculated), what would be the height h of our super-pool?
Since V= S oceans * h, then h= 3,83823 km
On the other hand, we can use a value for the coefficient of thermal expansion of water a of a de 207·10-6 ºC-1. That is, with the increase of each degree Celsius of temperature ΔT, the volume of water will increase α·V⋅ΔT
If the water temperature of seas and oceans were to increase by one degree then its new volume would be 1390287730·109 km 3
