How Wil l The Location of Melting Ice Caps Affect Rising Sea Levels?

A few weeks ago, we were learning about global warming and how it might be melting the ice caps and making sea levels rise. We wondered if this would really happen and if the location of our ice caps made a difference.

The Experiment

• Does the location of the ice caps affect how much sea levels rise? For this project we used two containers and a funnel. In the first container we put 60 ice cubes and 4cm of water. This represented the polar ice caps in the Arctic that sit in the water. In the second container, we also had 4 cm but the 60 ice cubes raised above the water in a funnel. This represented ice caps and glaciers on land. When they melted, it would drip into the water. Our next step was to see what happened after they melted in both containers. The results were surprisingly shocking!

Graphing Our Results!This graph

shows how the water level changed when the ice melted. As you can see, the ‘land’ ice raised the water from 4 cm to 7 cm but the ‘water’ ice had no effect on the water level. It started out as 4 cm and ended up at 4 cm.

Why Did It Happen?

This happened because the ice in the Arctic (ice in water) was already in the water so it did not add any new water when it melted.

Why Did This Happen?

• The Antarctic water (ice on ground) container added 60 ice cubes of melted water to it. These extra ice cubes made the water level rise.

• The location of the ice caps does affect how much sea levels rise. The ice in the water had no effect on the water level and the ice on land almost doubled the sea level. From this data, we can conclude that we should worry more about glaciers and ice sheets on land and not about icebergs in water!

Conclusions