Global rise in sea levels may be inevitable, experts warn as sci-fi becomes reality

Scientists say that a hotter planet will see Antarctica's vast glaciers crumble - and change the face of the Earth.

- By James Tapper

Thirteen hundred pages into Kim Stanley Robinson’s majestic Mars trilogy, the narrative switches back to Earth.

It’s the middle of the 22nd century and the West Antarctic ice sheet has suddenly collapsed. A private space-plane is circling over the South Pole and a geologist and a plutocrat are peering down at Antarctica. The geologist says the huge volumes of ice tumbling into the Southern Ocean are going to raise global sea levels by several metres. “That's it for every beach in the world,” the plutocrat responds.

This is science fiction, so not a reliable guide to the future. Indeed, the West Antarctic ice sheet may collapse much sooner than that.

Scientists from several Australian, South African and French universities warned in a paper in Nature last week that the planet may already, even in a best-case scenario, be heading for a tipping point of unstoppable ice loss that would mean “abrupt changes”.

“Abrupt” in climatological terms means happening over decades, rather than centuries. The reason, say the researchers, is that if global temperatures rise more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, some parts of the Antarctic environment might be more vulnerable to irreversible change than had been thought.

Either way, experts believe a global rise in sea level of at least three metres may now be inevitable as a result of the breakup of Antarctica’s giant western glaciers. That may not spell the end of beaches, but it would be enough to make the Netherlands nervous.