Rising Waters: Our Dynamic Earth

Music: Rain over the Sea by Bruno Vouillon [SACEM]Complete transcript available. Music: Rain over the Sea by Bruno Vouillon [SACEM]Complete transcript available. Earth’s global sea levels are rising – and are doing so at an accelerating rate. Waters in the ocean are expanding as they absorb massive amounts of heat trapped by greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere. Glaciers and ice sheets are adding hundreds of gigatons of meltwater into the oceans each year. With satellites, airborne missions, shipboard measurements, and supercomputers, NASA has been investigating sea level rise for decades. Together with our international and interagency partners, we’re monitoring the causes of sea level rise with high accuracy and precision. Global sea level is rising approximately 0.13 inches (3.3 millimeters) a year. That’s 30% more than when NASA launched its first satellite mission to measure ocean heights in 1992.nasa.gov/sea-level-rise-2020 Related pages

Music: "Marimba Rhythms" via Universal Production MusicComplete transcript available. Complete transcript available. Greenland and Antarctica are home to most of the world's glacial ice – including its only two ice sheets – making them areas of particular interest to scientists. Combined, the two regions also contain enough ice, that if it were to melt all at once, would raise sea levels by nearly 215 feet (65 meters) – making the study and understanding of them not just interesting, but crucial to our near-term adaptability and our long term survival in a changing world. When warm summer air melts the surface of a glacier, the meltwater bores holes down through the ice. It makes its way all the way down to the bottom of the glacier where it runs between the ice and the glacier bed, and eventually shoots out in a plume at the glacier base and into the surrounding ocean. The meltwater plume is lighter than the surrounding ocean water because it doesn't contain salt. So it rises toward the surface, mixing the warm ocean water upward in the process. The warm water then rubs up against the bottom of the glacier, causing even more of the glacier to melt. This often leads to calving – ice cracking and breaking off into large ice chunks (icebergs) – at the front end, or terminus of the glacier. Related pages

Music: Solitude by Kate Elizabeth LloydComplete transcript available. In the northeastern Pacific off the U.S. West Coast, sea level rise was 4 to 5 millimeters a year lower than the global average during the 1990s and 2000s. Then around 2010, sea level began steadily increasing along the West Coast. The largest increase, in 2014-16, coincided with a large El Niño event in 2015-16. While the rate has stabilized since then, it remains higher than the global average.Changing conditions in the Pacific have stirred up Earth’s largest ocean and redistributed its heat, piling up warm waters along U.S. Western shores and raising sea level in the process.nasa.gov/sea-level-rise-2020 Related pages

1998 flood footage provided courtesy of Santa Clara Valley Water DistrictComplete transcript available. A look at how NASA is dealing with the threat of sea level rise to its coastal infrastructure, particularly at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.nasa.gov/sea-level-rise-2020 Related pages