Message in a Bottle: Predicting Sea Level Rise from Thermal Expansion

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of my study is to examine the thermal expansion of seawater and how it could impact sea level rise on a global scale. Methods/Materials Plastic water bottle, hard plastic straw, silicone sealant, sea salt, water, digital thermometer, stopwatch, 100 watt light bulb and reflective casing, metric ruler. Changes in water level with increasing temperatures were measured with a clear plastic straw and digital thermometer and recorded every fifteen minutes for a total of 120 minutes. Results From the collected data, thermal expansion coefficients were calculated and averaged. The average coefficient was then applied to the ocean on a global scale, and an estimate of sea level rise was calculated. I found that if the upper one kilometer of the ocean were warmed by one degree Celsius, the sea level would rise 20 cm. These results support my original hypothesis that seawater does expand when warmed and that it is possible to create an estimated climate change model of sea level rise from thermal expansion. Conclusions/Discussion In short, my experiment offers a simple way to demonstrate one aspect of global sea level rise, and it might be used to further assess current predictions. My predictions, however, are from thermal expansion alone, not accounting for melting land ice and are therefore only one part of a climate change model.

Awards (1)

• Honorable Mention

Competition history

• CSEF 2016 Earth & Atmospheric Sciences (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0810

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Earth and Environmental Sciences projects
• CSEF Earth and Environmental Sciences projects
• Every CSEF 2016 project