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He said the research team hopes their work can inform the next major IPCC report, since that's the most widely cited document on climate change. "With the next report now being prepared for release in 2021-22, our intent was to make the case to the IPCC leadership to explain the reality of Antarctic potential melting better, as it might significantly add to sea level rise this century." In a Zoom conversation with CBS News, Englander illustrated that sea-level rise contribution from Antarctica, by far Earth's largest ice sheet, does not increase from a low-end warming scenario to a high-end warming scenario in the IPCC's latest report but in the real world it should. While the possibility of significantly higher sea-level rise due to Antarctica is mentioned in a footnote, it is by no means front and center. The reason for this, Englander explains, is because IPCC is very cautious with the data it uses in the report and only includes "numbers that meet their criteria for scientific accuracy with an acceptable degree of confidence." The level of uncertainty in the scientific community stems from the fact that glaciers can be unstable and the computer models used to project melting are still not sophisticated enough. In the paper, they write: "Existing ice-sheet models are more likely to provide reliable projections if global warming is kept below 2 Celsius [3.6 Fahrenheit], but a world in which warming exceeds 4 Celsius [7.2 Fahrenheit] presents a much more challenging situation. It is quite possible that this extreme situation will lead to reactions and feedbacks in the atmosphere-ocean-ice systems that cannot be adequately modeled at present " In the graphic below, put together by Englander and based on the IPCC report, the various contributors to sea-level rise (in inches) are projected out to the end of the century. Antarctica's contribution is shown in turquoise blue. 
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