Please help me! I know that its to do with the fact that the arctic is just floating ice, and I can see why it happens because to float an object must displace its volume, but I'm not sure how to go about proving it.
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By Archimedes Principal a floating object displaces exactly as much water, by weight, as it weighs. Therefore at the instant that waterborne arctic ice melts it will not displace any more than the instant before it melted.
Water like most everything expands as it gets higher in temperature (it has the odd quality of being at its most dense a couple of degrees above freezing, however.) As water heats up it will expand, thus raising the sea level.
Landborne ice doesn't displace water so as it melts it will raise sea level as soon as it joins the sea.
The Arctic is floating ice. Ice is less dense than water, which makes it float. When it melts, it becomes more dense and the total volume is smaller.
However, Antarctic ice, when it melts, will raise sea levels because it is currently on land and not floating in the water. Same with any other land-based ice, like glaciers.