Scientists Sunday said they could no longer rule out a fast-track melting of the Greenland icesheet -- a prospect, once the preserve of doomsayers, that would see much of the world's coastline drowned by rising seas.
The researchers found that the great Laurentide icesheet which smothered much of North America during the last Ice Age melted far swifter than realised, dumping billions of tonnes of water into the ocean.
-Past evidence boosts concern for Greenland icesheet: scientists
Sea level rises may accelerate due to melting ice sheet;
The most recent report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that sea levels will have risen by around 10cm at most by 2100, but according to Carlson's analysis, rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet could cause much greater rises.
"For planning purposes, we should see the IPCC projections as conservative," he said. "We think this is a very low estimate of what the Greenland ice sheet will contribute to sea level."
In an accompanying article, Mark Sidall at Bristol University describes how a 1 metre rise in sea level would submerge an estimated 2.2m square kilometres of land, largely in Asia, and displace around 145 million people at a global cost of $944 billion.
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