There's a lot of talk for a lot of good reasons about sea level rise, but have you ever wondered why the ocean is eating away at the coast?

Melting glaciers was the first thing that came to mind until we started this podcast.

So let's get a little sciencey with Severin Fornier.

She's an oceanographer and research scientist at NASA's debt propulsion lab.

I mostly work on observing the oceans from space.

Okay. Very science-y.

Yes, we have a lot of satellites that are observing the Earth.

And what is great about satellites is that they're really giving a big picture of the Earth,

depending on the satellite.

But like, for example, our timetry gives a map of like the height of the Earth, depending on the satellite, but like for example,

altimetry gives a map of like the height of the ocean every 10 days. And that help us to

monitor sea level rise and to be able to look at changes that are happening month after

month, years after years, and we've been doing that for the last 30 years.

JPL also has satellites that can measure sea ice and document the melting of ice on Greenland and Antarctica,

all of which is to say there's definitive proof.

Sea level arising about 3.3 millimeters a year, according to the data that we have collected from space for the past three years.

Two main causes are the ice sheets and the glaciers are melting all around the globe, and they're adding more water to the ocean.

So this causes sea level to rise. And another reason is that the

earth has been warming in the past decades and more than 90% of the heat has been absorbed by the ocean.

And when the water is warms up, the volume of this water tends to increase and expands so that we call that thermal expansion.

And that causes sea level to rise when the volume of the ocean is just rising and is increasing.

So the sea level is rising.

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