Even if levels of CO2 in the atmosphere stayed where they are now, research showed sea levels would rise by between 0.4 and 1.4 metres simply because water expands as it warms.
However, carbon dioxide emissions are rising faster than they were a decade ago.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has just been on a trip to see ice shelves breaking up in Antarctica and the melting Torres del Paine glaciers in Chile. He also visited the Amazon rainforest, which he said was being "suffocated" by global warming.
"These scenes are as frightening as a science fiction movie," Ban said. "But they are even more terrifying, because they are real."
The latest scientific knowledge on the causes and effects of climate change will be put before environment ministers in Bali, Indonesia, next month -- a meeting which is likely to agree a two-year strategy to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
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