Quickening climate change in the Arctic including a thaw of Greenland's ice could drive world sea levels by up to 1.6 metres by 2100, an international report said today.
The projection, by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, is higher than most past estimates including a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the main UN scientific group.
Rising sea levels are a threat to cities from New York to Buenos Aires, coasts from the Netherlands to China and low-lying islands in the Pacific or Indian Oceans.
It would also, for instance, raise costs of building tsunami barriers in Japan.
"The past six years (until 2010) have been the warmest period ever recorded in the Arctic," according to the report by the Oslo-based Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), which is supported by governments in the Arctic region.
"In the future, global sea level is projected to rise by 0.9 metre to 1.6 metres by 2100 and the loss of ice from Arctic glaciers, ice caps, and the Greenland Ice Sheet will make a substantial contribution," it said.