Climate Change and Cascade Flooding of North Sea Coasts?

[PsychoSerenity]

Unsuccessful doom-mongering is unsuccessful.

[cronus]

Unsuccessful doom-mongering is unsuccessful.

You need to speculate to accumulate. I've a few other ideas that I'll test out with the Rationalia Thinkcloud later...one will come up I'm sure.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

FYI, the Med is higher than the Atlantic. The choke points cause a backup of water.

[Thinking Aloud]

I could still be right in the round though? The Ocean will absorb a lot of water under elastic deformation. Forget that I'm wrong on minor details. The main thrust of my argument is still intact.

It's unlikely you'd get the cascade flooding you're suggesting over the timescales of any elastic crust motion. If all the ice on the Earth melted, you'd have a 65m rise in global sea levels, which gives an extra (roughly) 65 tonnes/m3 on the crust. Compare this to the estimated 3-4km thickness of ice during the last ice age, which was adding some 2700-3600 tonnes/m3 to the crust in places. Given the rebound rates from that event, and looking at the orders of magnitude, I'd guess (I've not published a paper on this yet) the plastic deformation you're looking for will be negligible.

Oh, and all oceanic crust is thin - the ocean ridges are where that crust forms.

[JimC]

I could still be right in the round though? The Ocean will absorb a lot of water under elastic deformation. Forget that I'm wrong on minor details. The main thrust of my argument is still intact.

Elastic deformation of the crust under ice sheets in previous glacial eras is a recognised phenomena, but the pressure they exerted was not evenly spread. The increase in pressure exerted by a given rise in sea level is spread evenly across the entire sea bed...

The crust is thinner in the Atlantic than other places. Another variable to consider.

A slightly greater pressure exerted by the ocean will simply fractionally reduce the amount of lava upwelling from the mid Atlantic ridge. In that sense, certainly nothing to add to your grab bag of potential catastrophes...

[cronus]

I could still be right in the round though? The Ocean will absorb a lot of water under elastic deformation. Forget that I'm wrong on minor details. The main thrust of my argument is still intact.

Elastic deformation of the crust under ice sheets in previous glacial eras is a recognised phenomena, but the pressure they exerted was not evenly spread. The increase in pressure exerted by a given rise in sea level is spread evenly across the entire sea bed...

The crust is thinner in the Atlantic than other places. Another variable to consider.

A slightly greater pressure exerted by the ocean will simply fractionally reduce the amount of lava upwelling from the mid Atlantic ridge. In that sense, certainly nothing to add to your grab bag of potential catastrophes...

Quite the optimist. Will it last?

[JimC]

At least until I shuffle off this mortal coil...

[mistermack]

You must have been smoking something wonderful.

The only reason that the crust gets pushed down, and rebounds, is that it has a few MILES of ice on top of it, concentrated around the poles but nothing at the equator.
A few centimeters of liquid water, dispersed evenly around the globe, is not going to have ANY effect.

Haven't you ever seen people squeezing an egg? Squeeze in one location, and it breaks easily. Spread out the sqeeze evenly, and it will take a really high force without deforming at all.

[Tyrannical]

Any increase in sea weight due to melt water is no where near what tidal differences can do to ocean depth.

[Rum]

Pressure! What about pressure at that depth!? Surely that will seal our doom!

Something must surely!!

[cronus]

I can understand the denial. After all who wants to drown on exit?

[mistermack]

The places that would change the most would be Greenland, and Antarctica.
Both a long way from the North Sea.

[cronus]

If I'm right a combination of storm forces(exceptional low in mid-atlantic, high between Iceland and Norway) and placement of the moon should produce a unusual bulge that will surge into the North Sea producing a massive swell of between 4 and 6 meters flooding inland further south, upto 10km or more. The very gradual retrenchment of water will still leave most all low land coastal settlements underwater in a new geographic reality....and that will be the start as over the next hundred years the same happens more and more. I've been wrong before. I've also been right.