Antarctica Will Melt If All Fossil Fuels Are Burnt, Raising Sea Levels By 160 Feet, Study

If all the fossil fuels on earth are burnt, it will shoot up the global temperatures by 20 degrees Fahrenheit, which would also lead to the melting of the entire Antarctic ice sheet and make sea levels rise to 160 feet, according to a new study, Reuters reports.

Hence, what scientists thought would take 10,000 years to happen may be completed in about a thousand years, which has appalled researchers.

They say that the Antarctic ice sheet can melt in about just a thousand years, with sea levels rising to as much as one foot every 10 years and land ice in various parts of the world also melting, according to hngn.

"To be blunt: If we burn it all, we melt it all," lead study author Ricarda Winkelmann, researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, told the New York Times.

With the expanding warm waters making the sea levels to rise further, the total sea levels are expected to rise by 200 feet.

Hence, the waters will submerge U.S. cities like New York, Miami, Houston, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, while cities in other countries like Sydney, Tokyo, Paris, Amsterdam, Venice, London, Beijing and Rome will also be lost.

"If we don't stop dumping our waste carbon dioxide into the sky, land that is now home to more than a billion people will one day be under water," study co-author Ken Caldeira of the U.S. Carnegie Institution said, according to Reuters.

In the next century, the sea level prediction is the same, totalling to only about three feet or less. But after that time, as about half the Antarctic ice sheet begins melting, there will be more serious problems than rising sea levels, according to the study.

"This is humanity as a geologic force," Caldeira said. "We're not a subtle influence on the climate system - we are really hitting it with a hammer."

The study was published in the Sept. 11 issue of the journal Science Advances.