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Education: Student Outcomes

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Melting Ice, Rising Seas: Coastal Impacts of Sea Level Rise

Grade level: 9-12
Themes: climate, ocean circulation, water cycle
Video: melting_ice_04.flv

Josh Willis: "A lot of people live in coastal areas. Coastal places that have beaches. As sea level rises, then beaches begin to erode and we begin to lose wetlands. A lot of different ecologically-sensitive regions lie along the coastline, and as sea level rises, these get flooded (and) the ecosystems, of course, change. And so all of this can have big consequences for people and especially people who live near the coast."

Josh Willis: "As the great ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland begin to melt and break up due to global warming, we really might experience very rapid sea level rise; three or four times as fast as the rate that we see today. So predicting this rate out into the future is very tricky because we really don't know when the ice sheets might break up and how fast they will when they do. So predicting future sea level rise is one of the great scientific problems of the future." (source)
 
Student Outcomes 
After viewing this video, students should be able to:
Explain how climate variations can induce changes in the global ocean circulation. (C: 9-12)
Explain the relationship between fresh water and ocean dynamics. (W: 9-12)
Determine if global precipitation, evaporation, and the cycling of water are changing. (W: 9-12)

Key:  C = climate / O = ocean circulation / T = 21st century technology / W = water cycle