Reuters: Seas to rise at varying rates due to warming: expert

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE50F42X20090121

Seas to rise at varying rates due to warming: expert

Wed Jan 21, 2009 9:42am EST

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

ROTHERA BASE, Antarctica (Reuters) - Sea levels will rise at widely varying rates around the world because of a quirk of the earth's gravity linked to global warming, a leading glaciologist said.

"Everyone thinks sea level rises the same around the world," David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey, told Reuters on Tuesday at the Rothera Base on the Antarctic Peninsula. "But it doesn't".

Rises could vary by tens of centimeters (inches) from region to region if seas gained by an average of one meter by 2100 as temperatures rise, he said. Worst-affected nations would have to budget billions of dollars more than others on coastal defences.

Vaughan said big ice sheets on Antarctica and on Greenland have a gravitational pull that lifts the seas around them -- water levels around Antarctica, for instance, are higher than if the frozen continent were an open ocean.

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