Antarctic ice melt unstoppable without strong climate action

16.10.15 By
This article is more than 9 years old

The Antarctica Ice Sheet contains approximately 30 million cubic kilometres of ice, which is around 1,779,359 times the volume of Sydney Harbour. We’ll just let that sink in for a little bit…

It’s the largest single mass of ice on earth, and most of that ice is sitting on land – which means it has the potential to contribute to sea level rise if melted.

A new study published in Nature has found that if climate change continues, driven by continued greenhouse gas emissions, an unstoppable melting process might start in Antarctica, committing us to a long-term sea level rise of over 1 metre.

You can read the full study here, but we’ve pulled out some key highlights for you below:

To prevent substantial and unstoppable long-term ice loss and sea level rise, the world MUST take major action to reduce human greenhouse gas emissions.


Image credit: United Nations via Flickr licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0