Ice cap meltdown to cause 22ft floods

The Greenland ice sheet is doomed to melt away within the next three centuries and flood hundreds of millions of people out of their homes.

This is the stark warning given by a scientist who claims that current forecasts grossly overestimate how long the ice sheet will survive.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has previously stated that a total meltdown is likely to take at least 1,000 years.

However, Dr Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia, believes the risk are far greater than the IPCC suggests.

Speaking at a meeting in Cambridge organised by the British Antarctic Survey, Dr Lenton said: "We are close to being committed to a collapse of the Greenland ice sheet. But we don't think we have passed the tipping point yet."

A remnant of the last Ice Age, Greenland's ice cap is nearly two miles high.

But if the climate change crisis reached the point of no return and it were to melt then global sea levels would rise by 22ft and swallow up most of the world's coastal regions.
more from The Telegraph