Title: Modeling Sea Level Rise | Learn Science at Scitable
Headings: Modeling Sea Level Rise
Modeling Sea Level Rise
Introduction: Lessons from the Past
Physical Models
Semi-Empirical Models
Local Sea Level Changes
Long-Term Rise
Impacts of Sea Level Rise
Acknowledgement.
References and Recommended Reading

Content: The second is semi-empirical models, which attempt to exploit the information contained in measurements of past sea level changes. Physical Models
Physical models aim to describe quantitatively the different physical processes that contribute to sea level rise. Global sea level can be raised in three fundamentally different ways: (i) By altering the volume of the existing ocean water mass by warming, a process called ‘thermal expansion'. (ii) By adding water mass. Mass addition comes primarily from melting land ice, i.e. from mountain glaciers, small ice caps and the big ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica. Melting sea ice hardly affects global sea level, since it already floats on the sea displacing water corresponding to its weight (Archimedes' principle). Mass addition (or removal) can to some extent also come from water stored on land in liquid form, e.g. from storage of water in human-built reservoirs, which corresponds to about 3 cm worth of sea level (Chao et al. 2008), or from pumping up water from deep aquifers for irrigation purposes which ends up in the ocean (Wada et al. 2010).