What would happen if sea levels dropped to pre-industrial era levels in the course of a month? Could this potentially cause some kind of disaster?
I guess you'd expect increased ice cover at the poles and you could lose some habitat close to land masses. The sea level drop itself wouldn't be too much of a problem but you'd have to wonder what caused it. It'd likely be a gradual process as well so there would be time to adjust to changes.
A massive Polar shift may cause the sea levels to drop by the slowing rotation of the earth. The water would be forced to wards the Poles from the equator. If it continued, till the earth completely stopped it's rotation, it could mean extinction.
Just introduce a little global warming to bring the sea levels back up. We could just go to Wal * Mart and buy all the aerosol cans we can afford, go out into the parking lot, and spray them into the air. heh. *That was, of course, sarcasm.
It is probably low tide, and when half of the globe experiences cooling it is probably night time. What you need to focus on are long term global trends, because all weather is local and all oceans are local, if you know what I mean Mellencamp. :shrug:
It would take a disaster of cosmic proportions for sea level to fall that far that fast. Whatever caused it to happen would do more damage than the drop itself. Collision with a planet-busting asteroid, something like that. Actually the current sea level is rather low. During the past half billion years it has only ever been 300ft (100m) lower. However, it has been 800ft (250m) higher, and the average sea level is about 300ft (100m) higher then the current level. The reason is that, by geological standards, we are currently in an ice age. This means that a significant portion of the earth's water is frozen, trapped in the polar caps and glaciers in the Himalayas, Alps, Rockies, Andes, etc., so it can't flow down to the sea. As the ice melts and flows into the sea and is not replaced by new annual deposits, obviously the sea level will slowly rise. This can be caused by an overall rise in the surface temperature, but a smaller melt-off can also be caused by shifts in the ocean currents that send warmer water to the poles and melt the ice shelves off the polar edges of the continents. Of course these phenomena reinforce each other. The current global warming will probably create a year-round ice-free passage around the North Pole during your lifetime, and this will accelerate the melting of the North Polar cap and the ice along the top edges of North America and Eurasia, and this will cause sea level to rise, and this will send more liquid water farther inland to melt more ice and clear more passages, and this will keep the cycle going. When all the polar ice caps and glaciers have melted, then the ice age will be officially over. All of the earth's water will be free to drain into the sea, and sea level will approach its highest possible level. The last time this happened was about 50 million years ago, and it happens with some regularity. See the Wikipedia article on the Sea Level Curve. You need to become more adept at using Wikipedia. I just typed in Sea Level and it gave me a whole bunch of choices. I saw "Sea Level Curve" on the list and figured that was exactly what I wanted. I was right. But even if I was wrong I could go back to the list and pick a different one.
One way to drop sea levels would be to reduce the temperature of the oceans. With current warming trends this will not happen. But!! what if the transfer of geo thermal energy from the mid ocean ridges where to decrease. If all that heat stopped leaking into the oceans what would the sea level decrease be? Just a thought...:shrug:
I don't know. Presumably you know your way around Wikipedia as well as any of us. Look up the coefficient of thermal expansion of water and do the math!
If global temperatures continue to rise the ocean currents apparently will stop circulating and the deep oceans will become stagnant and cold, how does this tie in to geothermal heat transfer? Would the tectonic zones keep a portion of the ocean circulating?
