#EveryChoiceMatters: Taking Action to Stop Sea Level Rising

[The two videos below are published on YouTube by Gabriel Kim and Sangyoon Kim for grade 10 science RAFT project. VPN is needed to watch the videos.]

Stopping Sea Level Rising: PROMOTIONAL VIDEO

Stopping Sea Level Rising: INTERVIEW VIDEO ft. Eddie, Lisa, Sam

What causes the sea level to rise?

The rise of sea level is a perennial environmental crisis caused by global warming. When sunlight hits the surface of Earth, some of the light is reflected upon the surface while some is absorbed by Earth. However, carbon dioxide and human-produced greenhouse gases and trap the heat in Earth’s atmosphere, causing the Earth’s temperature to increase.

Hotter temperature of Earth’s atmosphere expedite the melting of the glaciers in the polar regions. Earth’s hotter weather also causes the oceans to become warmer. Increased ocean water temperature induces the water molecules to move and interact more with each other, causing the water to take up more space, a phenomenon referred to as “thermal expansion”.

How does the rise of sea level impact the water cycle?

Water cycle is the cycle in which water never leaves the Earth and is constantly cycled through the atmosphere, ocean, and land. Water goes through the process of evaporation, transpiration, condensation, precipitation, and surface runoff in the water cycle. Sea level rising would impact the water cycle through this way:

Higher temperature means there are more evaporation and transpiration from the land and the sea to the atmosphere.

In the atmosphere, more condensation happens. The air gets warmer, and thus the atmosphere can hold more water vapor.

More precipitation causes more intense rainstorms. This also increases the risk of flooding. Majority of water runs off into rivers and streams, not doing much to dampen the soil.

This, along with increased temperature, increases the risk of drought (Climate Reality).

How does sea level rising impact food web and ecosystem?

Aforementioned, warmer oceans and faster melting of glaciers are both factors that cause sea level rising. Then, how would these two factors impact the food web and the ecosystem? Their impact on the marine and polar ecosystems would be the most significant.

Warmer oceans will cause marine species that live in cool water to inevitably search for and migrate to regions that contain cooler water. Furthermore, “coral breaching” will happen. This is a stress response caused by high water temperatures that can lead to massive number of coral deaths (Lerner). Coral reefs provide many fish species such as clown fish or Amphiprioninae with habitats. Thus, if the number of coral reefs decreases, the number of primary consumers will also decrease. This will cause the consumers in the upper parts of the food pyramid to have less food to eat. The consequences that arise from warmer oceans are detrimental and will eventually impact the entire marine food web, marine ecosystem, and marine biodiversity.

Melting of glaciers also impacts the polar ecosystem. The animal that we are most concerned and familiar today is the polar bear or Ursus maritimus. The polar bears are the emblematic victims of global warming. They spend most of their time on sheets of frozen ocean water, which melt and disappear in warmer months, and then reappear during the colder time of the year.  When the ice melts, the polar bears come ashore and survive on their stored fat until the ocean refreezes. However, with global warming, the time that takes for the ice to refreeze has become longer (Afp). This caused the number of  polar bears to sharply decrease. Shockingly, most polar bears will be extinct by 2050 according to National Geographic (Roach). The polar bears are at the top of the polar region food pyramid, meaning that without them, the number of secondary consumers such as seals will proliferate, thus causing a disruption in the food web.

How does sea level rising impact the growth of human population?

The rise of sea level has put many homes in coastal area and sub-sea level area in danger. The human population is continuously expanding and is projected to reach 11.18 billion by 2100 (Roser). However, the area of the land that humans could stand on is decreasing due to the rise of sea level. This inverse relationship between the human population and available land for humans means that there will be severe overcrowding in specific regions and lack of available food and resources for people.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that we can expect the oceans to rise between 11 and 38 inches (28 to 98 centimeters) by 2100, enough to inundate many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast (Warne). Some archipelagoes in the oceans are on the brink of submerging. Major metropolitan cities such as New York, Shanghai, London are vulnerable to flooding due to sea level rising and could be submerged in the next 50 years (Martin). With the losses of human territory, the world geography will look significantly different while the increased human population will have less food to eat, less resources to use, and less land to live in.