Can the so called waterfalls in the northern hemishere becomes bigger causing floods?Why?

Question

With global warming around the world, can these cause excessive melting thereby creating a bigger rivers and waterfalls and results into flooding in the northern hemisphere area??? just a creepy thought.... your ideas pls

Answer 1

The cycle of warming and intermittent ice ages appears to have been going on for a very short few million years. It appears logical to assume that if the Arctic ice melts, the oceans' water level will rise. That will, logically, lead to widespread flooding. Except that the available geological record doesn't show the flooding. Huh!

The geological record appears to show that when the open water in the Arctic Ocean increases (due to the ice cap melting) not all of the melt water goes into the oceans. Instead, much of it evaporates into the atmosphere. Since evaporated water (think of it as humidity) is not evenly distributed around the globe, a great deal of it stays relatively localized in the far northern reaches of the Northern Hemisphere. Geologists have theorized that this is consistent with the geological record of rapid onset for the recurring ice ages.

The evaporated water falls again, but as snow (remember, in the upper reaches of the atmosphere it's still incredibly cold, regardless of the temperature at sea level). So, now you have increased snow cover, reflects sunlight back into space causing rapid global cooling and - voila! - near-instant ice age.

We have no proof that this is what causes repeated ice ages, which seem to develop instantly in geologic terms (over the course of just a few decades). All of the evidence is inferential even for the existence of past ice ages.

Your question is actually quite good - scientists seeking information and understanding will tell you that your scenario is fine, you just didn't account for all of the factors involved. And real scientists will tell you that their scenarios don't account for all of the factors involved, either, because they don't know what all the factors are - and even if they did, they don't understand everything they know.

You might think about that - we have incomplete knowledge and imperfect understanding - when you read answers such as "global warming is over" or "what, don't you care about the earth, we have to do something drastic immediately!" We simply don't really know.

Answer 2

Water when heated (like many things) expand. So with a world heating up the oceans will raise as it tries to expand. Couple this with polar ice caps melting and you'll see the ocean raise even more. It could cause very serious problems as a lot of the worlds major cities are low coastal cities, meaning a lot of it could be under water. It's not just in the Northern Hemisphere (this is GLOBAL warming we are talking about).

I find it disturbing when you here stories of cntries/companies claiming the land underneath ice in the Northern Hemisphere, so that when the ice melts that can mine it for oil. Don't they understand the terrible logic in that?

Answer 3

No. Remember we're only talking 0.6 degC over the last 100 years. You can't notice any change at this level.

And 1998 was the warmest year on record (or 1934 depending who you believe) so there hasn't been any warming over the last 10 years.

Global warming is over.