Greenland and Glacier Melting

The Oil Drum has an interesting article on Greenland and the physics of ice melting.  It notes:

A "flat to gradually sloping icecap covers all but a narrow,
mountainous, barren, rocky coast". The ice sheet covers about 80% of
the land, and contains about 2.5 million cubic kilometers of ice. If
all that ice were to melt, it would increase global sea level by about 7m, or 23 feet.

There is a great deal of information here about the ice at the poles and it is well worth the read.

One of the maps it provides is an EPA map of the Eastern Sea board/Gulf coast that shows the portions of the US east coast that would be inundated by 1.5m and 3.5m of sea level rise.  As it notes:

3.5m would be reached halfway through a Greenland icesheet collapse. As
you can see, the total area isn’t that large, but it includes a pretty
large fraction of many of the east coast’s coastal cities. That would
be expensive.

It got me to thinking about where would Massachusetts and New England fare in a sea level rise.  To get an idea I found a set of EPA maps.  According to Google Earth, my house is at about 45 feet above sea level.  However, by the maps, some high value areas of Boston would be flooded or at least would be more vulnerable to hurricanes.  Food for thought.

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