If sea-levels rise, does the Earth's atmosphere extend to the same distance out to space, with the pressure increasing, or does it expand?
If sea levels rose 10m, how much change would there be to the volume of the atmosphere?
1 Answer
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90% of earths atmosphere is from 0-10000m this means an increase of 0,001%.
But this is wrong the melting ice will be replaced by air so there will not be any change in volume.
Ice have a larger volume than water have so the result will be a very slight drop in air volume.
I have not taken hight for air under pressure in the ice here but you get the point,You are only redistributing material on our planet so nothing is added or removed from the system.
answered Jul 2, 2019 at 15:10
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$\begingroup$ Won't there be a cubic relationship? Doesn't ice take 10% more volume than water? $\endgroup$– AndyJul 2, 2019 at 22:58
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$\begingroup$ as snow falls on top of ice the air in the snow will be compressed as the snow is converted to ice(this is why we can use ice cores to see the composition of the atmosphere back in time)this will compesate for some of the loss when ice melt to water.so the change in air volume will be very small. $\endgroup$ Jul 3, 2019 at 5:04