What If All the Polar Ice Melted? The Science of a 70-Meter Sea Level Rise

What would really happen if the ice at the poles melted? In this video we follow the science step by step: why melting Arctic sea ice barely changes sea level, how much water is locked in Greenland and Antarctica, what NASA satellites are measuring right now, the ice-albedo feedback, the AMOC ocean current and the “Doomsday Glacier”. Then we raise the oceans by 70 meters and look at the new world map.

Chapters

• 00:00 Earth is losing ice right now
• 00:37 Not all polar ice is the same
• 01:11 How much sea level is locked in the ice?
• 01:44 The melting has already begun
• 02:36 Stage 1: The Arctic turns blue
• 03:14 The ice-albedo feedback and permafrost
• 04:02 Stage 2: Greenland and the gravity twist
• 04:47 The AMOC: Europe’s ocean heater
• 05:32 Stage 3: Antarctica and the Doomsday Glacier
• 06:22 The world with +70 m of sea level
• 07:37 How fast could it happen?
• 08:32 Earth has done this before
• 09:14 What happens next is up to us

The key numbers

• Greenland holds about 7.4 m of sea level, Antarctica about 58 m. With mountain glaciers and warmer, expanding water, the total is roughly 70 m.
• Since 2002 Greenland has lost about 264 billion tonnes of ice per year and Antarctica about 135 billion (NASA GRACE / GRACE-FO).
• The rate of sea level rise doubled from about 2.1 mm per year in 1993 to about 4.5 mm per year in 2023.
• By 2100 the IPCC expects roughly 0.3–0.6 m with fast emission cuts and 0.6–1 m with very high emissions; up to 2 m can’t be ruled out.

Sources

• NASA GRACE / GRACE-FO ice mass data, 2002–2025
• Hamlington et al. (2024), Communications Earth & Environment: the rate of global sea level rise doubled during the past three decades
• Rantanen et al. (2022), Communications Earth & Environment: the Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979
• Heuzé & Jahn (2024), Nature Communications: the first ice-free day in the Arctic Ocean
• Morlighem et al. (2017, 2020), BedMachine Greenland and Antarctica
• IPCC AR6 Working Group I (2021)
• Armstrong McKay et al. (2022), Science: climate tipping points
• Kulp & Strauss (2019), Nature Communications: coastal population exposure
• Dutton et al. (2015), Science; Dumitru et al. (2019), Nature: past sea levels

Maps use NASA Blue Marble imagery and NOAA ETOPO elevation data. The +70 m maps are simplified (no isostatic rebound, regional gravity effects or coastal defenses), so local details are approximate. Subtitles are available in English and Bulgarian.