If the shelves protecting the continental ice sheet melt, it will trigger an "unstoppable" process and the "huge West Antarctic ice sheet would collapse completely" scientist at the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research said in a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. "In our simulations, 60 years of melting at the presently observed rate are enough of launch a process which is then unstoppable and goes on for thousands of years," Johannes Feldmann, the lead author, said