Book 6, Question 138
Why Do Ice Sheets Matter to a Beach Far Away?
Greenland and Antarctica hold huge ice sheets on land. When that ice melts or slides into the sea, it adds water to the whole ocean, because the ocean is one connected bowl. So a far-away island can change a beach an ocean away!
From the book
Page from A Million Whys Book 6
More fun facts
- The huge Greenland ice sheet loses about 300 billion tons of ice a year into the ocean.
- That makes Greenland the single biggest source of sea level rise from melting ice.
- Floating ice shelves attached to Antarctica's ice sheets act like a brace, holding back the ice on land.
- When ice shelves broke apart, ice flowed faster toward the ocean and added more to sea level rise.
- A NASA mission called Oceans Melting Greenland studies how warm ocean water melts Greenland's ice from below.
- From 2003 to 2009, NASA's ICESat satellite mapped changes in the height of the polar ice sheets.
Sources: NASA, NASA Science
Questions kids ask
Why does melting ice in Greenland matter far away?
The water flows into the ocean, which raises sea level around the world.