NASA has recently revealed that sea levels will rise by a metre over the next 100 to 200 years as satellite images show large sections of Greenland and Antarctica are vanishing at a much faster rate than previously thought.
Experts fear a Queensland-sized ice sheet is melting so quickly it will cause massive storm surges capable of decimating Australia’s coastal cities within the next century.
Dr. Steve Rintoul from the CSIRO said that if the NASA predictions prove true, Australia could expect more devastating flash floods similar to the one suffered by Brisbane four years ago.
He added that as the average sea level rose, so did the risk of destructive storm surges as the frequency and severity of coastal flooding increases and those floods are more serious as the average sea level rises.
Since 1992, the world’s oceans have risen by almost 8cm and in some places by as much as 23cm. Most of this extra water has come from melting ice and glaciers.
According to NASA, the Greenland ice sheet has caused the most concern, shedding around 303 gigatons of ice a year over the past decade. The Antarctic ice sheet has lost an average of 118 gigatons a year.
In a bid to prepare the world for this impending doom, NASA has embarked on a new Oceans Melting Greenland mission that will map the entire 1.7 million sq km ice sheet, which is the size of Queensland.
