The sea levels are on course to rise ‘unstoppably’ in future due to the melting of Antarctic ice sheets, as has been confirmed by NASA scientists.

It is noted that the rise in sea level by 10 feet could spell doom for many coastal towns and displace millions of people and this could happen within several centuries.

This warning has come from two teams of scientists with different approaches, focused on studying the changes made in different parts of the Antarctic. “A large sector of the West Antarctic ice sheet has gone into irreversible retreat,” according to Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine, who led one of the teams.

“It has passed the point of no return,” he added. Rignot and his team measured shrinkages of 10 to 35 kilometers in several retreating glaciers since the early 1990s and found that many of these glaciers were thinning.

The warming of air has also intensified the winds that sweep round the Antarctic, but the glaciers are not melting due to warming air but they are drawing warm waters to the surface and that’s causing the melting of ice.

The main cause of this warming is the greenhouse effects of increasing carbon dioxide from burning gas, oil, and coal. The ozone hole, which is also caused due to human activities, might also playing an important role in intensifying the winds.

The sea level rise across the globe has been caused mainly by the heat-caused expansion of seawater and the melting of ice will definitely cause a rise in the sea level.

Ian Joughin, leader of the other research team, said that the collapse of the ice sheet is unstoppable, adding, “There’s no stabilization mechanism.”