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🗞️ Driving the news: A landmark study published in Communications Earth & Environment warns that even if the world successfully limits global warming to 1.5°C, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could still undergo irreversible retreat, leading to dramatic sea level rise
• The researchers conclude that today’s warming of 1.2°C may already be sufficient to trigger long-term ice sheet collapse, fundamentally reshaping global coastlines and displacing hundreds of millions
🔭 The context: For decades, the 1.5°C target — enshrined in the Paris Agreement — has been promoted as the threshold to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change
• However, emerging paleo-climate data, satellite observations, and improved ice sheet modeling suggest these thresholds are more fragile than previously thought
• The ice sheets have already quadrupled their melt rate since the 1990s, losing 370 billion tons of ice annually
🌍 Why it matters for the planet: If ice sheet destabilization accelerates, global sea levels could rise by up to 40 inches per century, far outpacing current adaptation efforts
• Such a scenario threatens 230 million people living within 1 meter of sea level and poses severe risks to infrastructure, ecosystems, and food security
• Even marginal increases in temperature now carry outsized risks for irreversible planetary tipping points
⏭️ What's next: The study underscores the urgency of not only meeting but surpassing current climate targets, advocating for warming limits closer to 1.0°C — an increasingly improbable scenario without rapid fossil fuel phase-out
• Policymakers, especially in coastal nations, must prepare for managed retreat, infrastructure overhaul, and large-scale climate migration planning
• Upcoming COP summits will likely face growing pressure to redefine “safe” climate thresholds based on these findings
💬 One quote: “Limiting warming to 1.5 will be a major achievement... but in no sense will it slow or stop sea level rise and melting ice sheets.” — Chris Stokes, glaciologist, Durham University
📈 One stat: Since the 1990s, ice sheet loss has quadrupled, contributing to a doubling of the global sea level rise rate over the past 30 years
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