evidence: Dr John Mercer, a glaciologist at Ohio State University in Columbus, warns that global warming could cause Antarctic ice sheets to collapse, leading to a disastrous rise in sea levels [...] Climate models suggest that when this sector collapses, it could destabilise the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet like falling dominoes. This would cause sea levels to rise by three metres over a timescale of centuries to millennia. [...] The collapse of these three ice sheets will raise sea levels by around 10 metres over the period of thousands of years. However, how quickly they rise depends on the magnitude of global warming.