The world, especially those who live along the coastal areas, either evacuate this early or arm themselves with better and definitive actions concerning their homes and sources of livelihood as a recent study released over the weekend showed the ice sheet off the western part of Antartica is warming faster than earlier projected, and that sea water level forebodingly rising is not only a threat but could be the inevitable scenario in the very near future.

According to a new paper released Sunday in Nature Geoscience, temperatures in West Antarctica have grown by 4.3°F over the past 50 years. Scientists said it was as much as the 5°F rise on the nearby Antarctic Peninsula, considered the Earth's fastest-warming region.

Suffice to say, the warming rate discovered in West Antarctica was far bigger than what scientists have earlier thought and projected.

"If this melt continues, if the summer warming continues, we could begin to see increased runoff from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet later in the century that could enhance its ongoing contribution to sea level rise," Andy Monaghan, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) climatologist who co-authored the study, said.

According to David Bromwich of Ohio State University and lead author of the study, the ice sheet runoff from West Antarctica contributes 0.2 millimeters per year to global sea level rise, or one-fifteenth of the 3 millimetres that the sea level rises each year.

Although the figure is small at a glance, scientists warned a meltdown from the region remains a serious concern.

"West Antarctica holds enough fresh water to raise sea level by 11 feet if all the ice melted, and even a fraction of that amount could prove catastrophic to coastal areas where hundreds of millions of people live," Climate Central said.

"Our record suggests that continued summer warming in West Antarctica could upset the surface mass balance of the ice sheet, so that the region could make an even bigger contribution to sea level rise than it already does," Mr Bromwich said.

"If this trend continues, its contribution to sea level rise, could become significant. Not today or tomorrow, but a few decades in the future."

The study noted that the greater warming occurs "during austral summer, particularly in December - January, the peak of the melting season."