Imagine what would happen to sea levels if all that melts – which it is starting to…
Quote from: shaolin_monkey on 29 January, 2020, 08:21:14 AMImagine what would happen to sea levels if all that melts – which it is starting to…Not just sea levels, as I understand it. All that ice in both the arctic and antarctic circles weighs a huge amount and that mass pressing down has a stabilising effect on the tectonic plates below.
Glaciation of mountainous areas introduce extra load on Earth's crust, which introduces stress in the crust. Depending on the rate of the isostatic uplift due to melting glacier and the composition of the underlying strata, these stresses can be released as landslides, ductile deformation and also as earthquakes. It may look ridiculous that climate change can affect the tectonic plate moment beneath the crust, but scientists like McGuire argue that it cannot just intensify disastrous events like cyclones, volcanoes, tsunamis but can trigger earthquakes as well.