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9. The Rising Sea - Warming oceans and melting ice
🎧 Episode 9 — The Rising Sea: Warming Oceans & Melting Ice
🐾 Belle’s Question:
Why is sea level rising even where there’s no ice nearby?
📌 If you remember one thing:
Sea level rises because warmer ocean water takes up more space, and melting land ice adds more water to the sea.
🔍 What we cover:
• Sea level rises in two main ways: warmer seawater expands, and melting land ice adds water to the ocean.
• The biggest sea-level story is about glaciers and ice sheets on land, not floating sea ice.
• Sea level rise is measured over time using tide gauges and satellites.
• A higher average sea level makes coastal flooding and erosion more likely.
• Salt water can also get into freshwater supplies, soils, wetlands, and farmland near coasts.
• Low-lying island states such as Kiribati show why sea level rise is a serious human problem, not just a map problem.
• Sea level rise has a “long memory”: even after warming stops increasing, the sea can keep rising for a long time.
✨ One Bright Thing:
In Maasbommel in the Netherlands, amphibious houses can float upward during floods. In Amsterdam, Schoonschip shows a low-carbon floating neighbourhood with solar panels, heat pumps, batteries and a smart grid. And in Tuvalu, about 8 hectares of new raised land have been created to help protect a very low-lying island country from future sea-level rise.
🔢 Key numbers:
• Since the early 1990s, global sea level has risen by about 10 centimetres — about the height of a coffee mug.
• The sea is now rising more than twice as fast as it was in the 1990s.
• Tuvalu has only about 25 square kilometres of land in total and a population of about 11,000.
👩🏫 Teacher Notes:
This episode explains sea-level rise as a physical response to warming, driven by thermal expansion and melting land ice. It also shows why sea-level rise matters through flooding, erosion, salinisation, and risks to low-lying islands such as Kiribati.
📚 Sources & further reading:
NASA Sea Level Change Team — global sea level and thermal expansion
WMO — State of the Global Climate 2024
IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere
World Bank Climate Knowledge Portal — Kiribati country profile
Schoonschip Amsterdam
View all episodes
By theclimateclassroom.org🎧 Episode 9 — The Rising Sea: Warming Oceans & Melting Ice
🐾 Belle’s Question:
Why is sea level rising even where there’s no ice nearby?
📌 If you remember one thing:
Sea level rises because warmer ocean water takes up more space, and melting land ice adds more water to the sea.
🔍 What we cover:
• Sea level rises in two main ways: warmer seawater expands, and melting land ice adds water to the ocean.
• The biggest sea-level story is about glaciers and ice sheets on land, not floating sea ice.
• Sea level rise is measured over time using tide gauges and satellites.
• A higher average sea level makes coastal flooding and erosion more likely.
• Salt water can also get into freshwater supplies, soils, wetlands, and farmland near coasts.
• Low-lying island states such as Kiribati show why sea level rise is a serious human problem, not just a map problem.
• Sea level rise has a “long memory”: even after warming stops increasing, the sea can keep rising for a long time.
✨ One Bright Thing:
In Maasbommel in the Netherlands, amphibious houses can float upward during floods. In Amsterdam, Schoonschip shows a low-carbon floating neighbourhood with solar panels, heat pumps, batteries and a smart grid. And in Tuvalu, about 8 hectares of new raised land have been created to help protect a very low-lying island country from future sea-level rise.
🔢 Key numbers:
• Since the early 1990s, global sea level has risen by about 10 centimetres — about the height of a coffee mug.
• The sea is now rising more than twice as fast as it was in the 1990s.
• Tuvalu has only about 25 square kilometres of land in total and a population of about 11,000.
👩🏫 Teacher Notes:
This episode explains sea-level rise as a physical response to warming, driven by thermal expansion and melting land ice. It also shows why sea-level rise matters through flooding, erosion, salinisation, and risks to low-lying islands such as Kiribati.
📚 Sources & further reading:
NASA Sea Level Change Team — global sea level and thermal expansion
WMO — State of the Global Climate 2024
IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere
World Bank Climate Knowledge Portal — Kiribati country profile
Schoonschip Amsterdam