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Studying the planet's oceans from space.
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The reason we need to care about sea level rise is
that we're heating up the planet
by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
As we heat up the planet, the water literally expands.
This causes sea level rise, but also melting glaciers
and ice sheets cause sea level rise as well.
Whenever people burn fossil fuels,
we add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
Now, the atmosphere already has a lot of greenhouse gas
and that's the reason our planet is basically the temperature
that it is, but as we add extra greenhouse gases we actually
trap more heat on the planet.
Greenhouse gases work by allowing light from the sun
to penetrate the atmosphere, this heats up the Earth,
and then when the light tries to escape back
out into space, it gets trapped.
So, greenhouse gases keep extra energy on the planet
that would otherwise be going back out into space.
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Be sure to tell your teacher
to visit the NASA Explorer Schools Virtual Campus.
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