Transcript:
About two-thirds of all fresh water on Earth is frozen.
This water is trapped in glaciers, which cover mountains and wind through valleys, and in the massive ice sheets that blanket Greenland and Antarctica.
But as the climate warms, much of that ice is melting and raising sea levels around the world.
Glaciers and ice sheets form as snow piles up on land and compresses down into a thick block of ice.
Each year, many glaciers lose ice in the summer as they melt and chunks break off or calve into the ocean.
Then in winter, when temperatures drop and new snow accumulates, glaciers can build back up again.
But the warming climate is now causing many glaciers and ice sheets to melt faster than they regrow – so they are shrinking dramatically over time.
The Greenland ice sheet, for example, has lost more than 5 trillion tons of ice in just 20 years. That’s about 15 million times the weight of the Empire State Building.
When glaciers and ice sheets melt, water that was previously stored on land rushes into the ocean.
This causes seas to rise, much like turning on the tap raises the water level in a bathtub.
So as the climate continues to warm, melting glaciers and ice sheets will push sea levels higher and higher.
Reporting credit: Ethan Freedman / ChavoBart Digital Media
