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A new study says that no matter how much the world cuts back on carbon emissions, a large and important part of Antarctica is expected to disappear.

The study focused on the melting of protective ice around Antarctica’s Amundsen Sea in western Antarctica. They said the “unavoidable” melting will take hundreds of years, resulting in a rise of nearly 1.8 meters in sea levels. This melting will have a profound impact on where and how people live in the future. The study, published in Nature Climate Change, warns that even if future warming was limited to just a few tenths of a degree more, it would have “limited power to prevent ocean warming that could lead to the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.”

The lead writer of the study, Kaitlin Naughten, explains that the research indicates that the Earth is on a path towards rapid ocean warming and ice shelf melting over the coming century. While past studies have talked about how serious the situation is, Naughten was the first to use computer modeling to study how warm water from below will melt the ice. The study looked at four different cases in how much carbon emissions the world produces. ln each case, ocean warming was just too much for this area of the ice to survive. It also looked at what would happen if future warming was limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius over mid-19^th century levels: the international goal. They found the runaway melting process in this case as well.

The study primarily focuses on the part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that is most at risk of melting near the Amundsen Sea, including the Thwaites ice shelf, often referred to as the “Doomsday Glacier”. According to Eric Rignot, an ice scientist at the University of California Irvine, this area is already “doomed” (注定的) due to the rapid melting that has occurred. Naughten does not like to use the word “doomed”, because she said 100 years from now, the world might not just stop but drive back carbon levels in the air and climate change. But she said what is happening now on the ground is a slow collapse that cannot be stopped, at least not in this century.