Sea levels expected to rise two feet within the next 70 years and eight feet by 2200.
- Hundreds of coastal cities face being wiped out by flooding
- Levels won't stop rising until they are 25 to 30 feet higher than now
- Estimations based on level of carbon in the atmosphere stabilising
PUBLISHED: 13:43 EST, 14 December 2013 | UPDATED: 14:02 EST, 14 December 2013
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Sea levels will rise two feet within just 70 years and eight feet by the year 2200, according to a new study which suggests hundreds of coastal cities face being wiped out within a matter of generations.
Scientists now claim we have awoken a 'sleeping giant' and that sea levels won't stop rising until they are between 25 to 30 feet higher than now.
Alarmingly those predictions are based on the assumption that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere remain at what they are today.
Threat: Rising sea levels caused by melting ice will threaten hundreds of coastal cities within the next few generations, scientists predict
Some 600 million people currently live within 10m of present-day sea level and that area generates rougly 10 per cent of the world's total GDP.
The combined effects of rising sea levels coupled with land subsidence and population growth mean that by the 2070s, the population exposed to flooding risk may have tripled.
Researchers found current rate of sea-level rise are roughly twice as any other period between ice ages.
Huge pieces of ice break away from the Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia, southern Argentina. Scientists claim sea levels won't stop rising until they are between 25 to 30 feet higher than current levels
Researchers found current rate of sea-level rise is roughly twice as much as any other period between ice ages
Meanwhile levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and other factors that cause temperatures to rise, are increasing 10 up to times faster than at any other period before the industrial revolution.
Eelco Rohling, a climate scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra, told NBC News: 'We have awoken a sleeping giant, he is now here to stay.'
The scientists sat that as the earth continues to warm, the major ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica will begin to melt, a process that takes a long time to start and stop.
Melting pot: Retreating glaciers will add to sea level rise
The findings, reported in the journal Scientific Reports, are based on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels stabilising at today's level of 400 parts per million.
But if they continue to rise then even ice that is considered stable, such as the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, could also begin to destabilise.
According to Rohling, if levels hit a worst case scenario of 1,000 parts per million, then 'all bets are off'.