Rising sea grade lend on by a warming planet are a very serious scourge to many coastal communities living in every corner of the ball , from Miami in Florida to Mumbai in India . But the thawing of glaciers may also have another peculiar burden , as it seems that the UKcould lose some its good deal – sort of .
The Ordnance Survey , the national agency responsible for mapping Great Britain , traditionally value mountain peaks from ocean spirit level , taking the mean value from between high lunar time period and humbled tide . If the absolute height comes in above 609.6 meters ( 2,000 feet ) marvellous , then it is sort as a mighty mountain ; anything below and it is relegated to a lowly hill . But there are plenty of raft across the UK that make the grade by just a few centimeters .
For representative , the mountain Thack Moor , located in Cumbria in the north of England , was up until very of late think to be just 609 meter improbable , meaning it was not quite lofty enough . It wasnot until 2013that a more accurate reading of the peak found that it was really 609.62 meters eminent , giving it the prestigious official plenty position . But with only a measly two centimetre of cowcatcher room , it would n’t take much to knock Thack Moor off its rod .
Sea stratum are rising . NASA / CSIRO
The fact that ocean layer are rising has been documented around the globe . NASA has calculatedthat since 1993 the earth ’s oceans have been rising by an norm of 3.4 millimetre per yr . The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationhas foundthat ocean levels have been come up by around 1.5 centimeters ( 0.6 inch ) every X since 1900 . However , since 1992 , it is now more like 3 cm ( 1.2 inches ) per 10 . At this rate , it wo n’t take long for Thack Moor to lose its crown again .
The thaw of the glacier in Greenland is suppose to bea very immediate threat . If just the undivided Zachariæ Isstrøm glacier in the northeast of the island were to evaporate , for example , the global ocean level would uprise by an incredible 46 centimeters ( 18 inches ) , and there are worry speck that this might already be happening . The rate at which the ice is sliding off the land and into the waterhas increased since 2012 , losing an norm of 4.5 billion tonnes ( 5 billion tons ) per year ( and even this might be an underestimate ) .
Whether or not these pointy protrusion are tidy sum or hills is neither here nor there , and wo n’t essentially impress anything apart from those few hardcore mountaineers who bid to climb all of Great Britain ’s peaks . But it does raise an interesting point about the unforeseen consequences that might emerge as climate change really fix in .
