The Earth can’t easily adjust to the rate of change right now.

 A complete melting of Greenland’s mile-thick ice sheets would dump seven meters (23 feet) of extra water into the world’s ocean.

“What we’re seeing right now ( 2018) is really unprecedented. These melt increases are driven by warming, which is caused by humans pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” says Ellyn Enderlin, a glacier scientist at the University of Maine who was not involved in the study. “The feedbacks the Earth has, the checks it has—they can’t make up for that. The system can’t adjust to the rate of change right now.