An earlier version of this article said the sea levels could rise by 656 feet by 2100 if the Antarctic ice sheet started to melt. It has been corrected to reflect the fact that they would rise by 6.6 feet. Current levels of global heating from the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of nature risk triggering five tipping points that could throw Earth's systems further out of balance, with three more at risk of toppling in the next decade.
Those tipping points are the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the mass die-off of warm-water coral reefs, the thawing of Arctic permafrost, and the collapse of the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre circulation. The melting of just the Antarctic ice sheet, for example, could raise global sea levels by 6.6 feet by 2100, Carbon Brief reported, meaning 480 million people would face yearly coastal flooding.