Global Warming

Landmark UN report warns sea levels will rise faster than projected

Cities from New York to Shanghai could see regular flooding, as sea levels rise faster than previously thought.

Glaciers and ice sheets from the Himalayas to Antarctica are rapidly melting.

And the fisheries that feed millions of people are shrinking.

These are just some of the impacts that emissions of greenhouse gases have already triggered across the planet's oceans and frozen regions, according to a new landmark report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

This new report paints a full and alarming picture of the rapid thawing happening in frozen regions all across the globe -- and how the changes will dramatically alter human civilization in the coming decades.

The findings show that the planet's warming is accelerating melting in glaciers and ice sheets from Greenland to Antarctica, and that sea levels will likely rise more than previously projected by the end of this century.

Of the major ice sheets, Greenland's -- which has the potential to raise sea levels around 20 feet -- is melting the fastest, and lost more than 275 gigatons on average per year between 2006 and 2015. But the even larger Antarctic ice sheet is also shrinking, and its mass loss tripled between 2007 and 2016 compared to the previous ten years.

Even if collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet is not imminent, the report says that many of the 680 million people around the world living in low-lying coastal areas will experience annual flooding events by 2050 that used to occur only once a century.