Collapse Of Antarctic Ice Sheet Would Likely Put Washington, D.C. Largely Underwater

[bananas]

28. The article in the OP also says thousands of years

and your other post about this century refers to thermal expansion, not ice sheet collapse.
This thread is about ice sheet collapse.

When the Antarctic ice sheets collapse, there will be a large sea level rise in a matter of hours,
according to the discussion from a few years ago.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=63301&mesg_id=63511

happyslug (1000+ posts) Thu Aug-10-06 03:46 PM
Response to Reply #20

22. I suspect it will be a gradual raise within a 24 hour period.
Edited on Thu Aug-10-06 03:48 PM by happyslug

Remember a Tsunami is the product of a rapid change in sea floor levels that acts like an agitator on a washing machine. If the WAIS just starts to move into the Southern Ocean (The technical name for th ocean around Antarctica) you may NOT have a rapid agitation but a gradual but rapid raise.

Now I have read about the Azores' Volcano. Every so often (In geological terms which can means once every couple of thousand years) the side of the Island falls into the Atlantic and causes a Tsunami in the direction of New York City. This Tsunami is caused by a rapid fall into he ocean o a huge amount of Earth. While I do NOT see the WAIS doing the same, it might very while act the same way, no one nows and from i have read there is no evidence of such a Tsunami the last time the WAIS collapsed.

Now, what may happen is the Collapse of the WAIS leads to a Tsunami but directed straight alone the International date line Ross sea, so that any resulting Tsunami will not hit anything till the Aleutian islands and then Alaska and Siberia. The same with the Ronne Ice Shelf, it may direct any Tsunami to the "gold coast" of Africa (Nigeria, Liberia etc). Either way no direct affect on Europe or America (Both North and South America). This is complicated by the existence of the Ross and Ronne Ice Shelves, which may act as a barrier to any Tsunami from forming (i.e. The Tsunami expends its energy moving the Ross and Ronne Ice Sheets out to sea to permit the Ice Sheets to follow.

Thus what I suspect will happen is just a steady increase in sea level as opposed to a Tsunami, but since I have no records from 100,000 years ago when this last may have happen your guess may be as good as mine.


Here is a map of Antarctica, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is between the Ross and Ronne Ice Shelves on the Map (just South of South America):