Question: In what way would the ice caps act if they acted the same as in the past?

Carys Cook answered on 21 Jun 2011:

Excellent question. During the time period I am studying, called the Pliocene, when the climate was similar to the near future (if we keep going the way we are now), there is a lot of controversy about how the Antarctic ice sheets behaved. That is because it is very difficult to get to Antarctica and find evidence, and what evidence we have is not good enough to answer that question. However, my work is new and suggests that there may be particular areas of the ice sheets that may be unstable – these areas typically are regions where the ice sheet today sits below sea level, meaning that the ocean can potentially reach inland. This would make the ice sheet melt rapidly (over 10’s of years). It’s not very good news I’m afraid, because if this happened then, it may happen in the future…I hope I don’t find any more evidence!