Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its all-encompassing evaluations of the present state of climate chance research and also made predictions for the future climate of this planet.

According to the latest news, Steven Nerem form University of Colorado says that “we are locked into at least 3 feet of sea level rise, and probably more”.

If you are one of the 150 million people on Earth who live near the ocean we can say that this is startling news. But even if you don’t live close to the sea, you likely use some products that are made in plants near the water and you also love to on vacation at the beach.

What is behind this sea level rise?

For rising sea levels there are three main causes: melting mountain glaciers, ice loss form the massive Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and the expansion of warmer ocean water.

Ocean Melting Greenland is one of those projects and it goes by the intentional acronym of OMC (how ironic…). In the next six years, experts will try to determinate how the Greenland Ice Sheet is contributing to sea level rise.

According to the European Space Agency the Jakobshavn Glacier, the most fastest moving glacier in Greenland currently broke off a piece of ice big enough to cover the island of Manhattan in ice roughly 1,000 feet thick.

If in Greenland the entire ice sheet will melt completely the global seas levels would rise around 20 feet. Climate experts say that temperatures are rising too faster than at any point known in history. This is happening because of human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels.

Also, experts revealed that the rise is not uniform. In some places, sea levels rise more than 9 inches while, for example, in U.S. West Coast have been observed slight decreases in sea level.