This year Arctic sea ice reached its lowest level since monitoring began in the 1970s – a whopping 39% below the recorded average1. The summer melt varies each year, but has accelerated consistently and alarmingly since 2002. If recent trends continue, the Arctic may be ice-free in summer by 20132. This means the planet is already passing a tipping point which makes further warming of the Arctic inevitable. If left unchecked this will lead to the complete melting of Greenland's ice sheets, causing a seven metre rise in sea level.

Click for interactive graphic

How fast could this occur? At the end of the last ice age 14,000 years ago, the sea level rose 20 metres in just 400 years³. That's one metre every twenty years.

Melting is also accelerating in the Antarctic, where UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon visited this week. He called for an emergency political response to the climate crisis, warning that the vast West Antarctic ice sheet is now "afloat" and we will face a six metre sea level rise if the ice sheet breaks up⁴. This would flood cities like London and New York and displace hundreds of millions of people across Asia.

It would also devastate parts of our own backyard, as seen in the images below.

How would a 6m sea level rise affect you?

Sydney Airport	Kurnell	Taren Point and Sylvania Waters	Towra Point Nature Reserve
Chipping Norton	Voyager Point	Woronora	Woolooware

These are very real risks, with unthinkable consequences. We need urgent action right now, not just to reduce our greenhouse emissions, but to eliminate them altogether and even draw down carbon out of the atmosphere, because we clearly have enough already there to cause dangerous climate change.

References

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