Greenland already locked in to major sea level rise

PARIS: Even without any future global warming, Greenland’s melting ice sheet will cause major sea level rise with potentially "ominous" implications over this century as temperatures continue to rise, according to a study published on Monday.

Rising sea levels -- pushed up mainly by melting ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica -- are set to redraw the map over centuries and could eventually swamp land currently home to hundreds of millions of people, depending on humanity’s efforts to halt warming.

In the new study, published in Nature Climate Change, glaciologists found that regardless of any future fossil fuel pollution, warming to date will cause the Greenland ice sheet to shed 3.3 percent of its volume, committing 27.4 centimetres to sea level rise.