Thousands of years ago, when sea levels where much lower than today, the Torres Strait was a land bridge between Australia and Papua New Guinea. Rising sea levels turned it into a series of islands. As climate change continues to cause more sea level rise, these islands will get smaller. Parts of the islands are more than 100 m above sea level, so there is no risk of the entire island disappearing. But, as the sea level rises, high tides and storm surges become much bigger problems. A storm surge is the increase in sea level that happens during a cyclone or other large storm. Sea level rise is already making the impact of these extreme events much more severe, and this will continue to get worse as the sea level rises.

Antarctica is melting around the edges where it touches the relatively warm ocean. Climate change is making the ocean warmer, and it is very unlikely that this will change anytime soon. We expect that the ice covering Antarctica will continue to melt, and will probably melt even faster in the future. If we act swiftly enough there is a chance that the melt will slow down or even reverse, but that chance is dwindling every day.

Yes. The continent of Antarctica is covered by a giant ice block up to four kilometres thick. Most of the rock is below sea level, so if you took away all the ice, Antarctica would have a very different shape. Millions of years ago lots of plants and animals lived on Antarctica, and perhaps in the future they will again. But, it takes a long time to melt that much ice, so it's unlikely that any of us will ever see it.

Polar bears and penguins spend much of their life on the sea ice - a thin layer of frozen sea water that floats on top of the ocean. As sea levels rise, the ice moves up with the water. This means that rising sea levels aren't a big problem for polar bears and penguins. But, climate change is still a big problem for these animals, because the ice they rely on is melting.

If all the ice at the poles melted, the sea level would rise by nearly 70m. Because there is so much ice, it takes a very long time to melt it all. But it is currently melting, causing the sea level to go up by about 2 mm every year. At the current rate, we will all be long dead from old age before they are fully melted. But what happens to our children and the world they live in?

As the sea level goes up, some coastal cities and towns will start to flood and the higher sea level will erode the land from underneath the buildings. There will be difficult choices in the future; we will need to decide what gets left behind as we move to higher ground and what we try to save.

There are a lot of glaciers in the world and they can be found on every continent, except Australia. The largest glaciers are called ice sheets and they cover vast areas of Greenland and Antarctica.

The Antarctic Ice Sheet is the largest of all and if that were to fully melt the sea level would rise by nearly 60 m! By comparison, melting the Greenland Ice Sheet would only raise the sea level by 7 m. The rest of the glaciers are all much smaller and if they all melted the sea level would only rise by 0.3 m.

If every single glacier were to melt, the ocean would rise by nearly 70 m. But, it would take a very long time to melt all that ice. At the moment melting glaciers and ice are causing the sea level to rise by about 2 mm every year.