The claim: Measuring cup meme shows ice melt from international warming can’t cause sea-level increase
Since 1993, average international sea levels haveactually increased approximately 4 inches due to international environment modification, according to NASA. However, a meme that recommends polar ice melt from environment modification cannot cause sea-level increase has resurfaced on social media.
The meme reveals 2 images side by side.
One image reveals a determining cup with water and ice in it. The ice is identified “ice berg.” The water is identified “ocean.”
The other image reveals a determining cup with water and no ice, with water at a comparable level. The image is identified “ice berg melts” (pointing to where the ice was in the other image) and “ocean level stays the exactsame.”
“A little science lesson for the #IDIOTS at the worldwide warming conference,” checksout the meme text in a June 5 Facebook post.
The meme has spread on social media for years. A 2019 variation was shared 3,700 times. Recent versions of the meme likewise got thousands of interactions on Twitter.
However, the meme is deceptive and the claim it makes is incorrect. It illustrates a scenario where the melting of ice that was currently drifting in the container failed to substantially modification the water level. That’s not what occurs in the oceans.
Sea-level rise happens when water from melting land-based ice sheets and glaciers pours into the ocean. This includes more water to the ocean than it formerly consistedof, which raises sea levels.
Sea-level increase is likewise intensified by worldwide warming itself because water broadens as it warms up.
Neither of these procedures – the loss of land-based ice or the thermal growth of ocean water – is represented in the meme.
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USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for remark.
Meme does not show procedures that cause sea-level increase
The experiment portrayed in the meme stopsworking to show the procedures that cause sea-level rise, according to Claire Parkinson, a NASA climatologist.
“It rather is revealing something that doesn’t cause sea level increase – the melting of ice that was currently drifting in the ocean,” such as sea ice, Parkinson informed USA TODAY in an e-mail.
Arctic sea ice – seawater that freezes and then drifts on the ocean – is being lost to environment modification, however the meltwater does not straight contribute to sea-level increase because it stemmed in the ocean.
“The primary triggers of sea-level rise is by the addition of land-based ice into the sea and the natural growth of the ocean with warming,” Sally Brown, a sea-level increase scientist and head of the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences at Bournemouth University, informed USA TODAY in an e-mail.
Land-based ice consistsof mountain glaciers as well as the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets – which are losing hundreds of billions of loads of ice per year, according to NASA.
The other significant factor to sea-level increase, ocean growth due to international warmi