New York City would be swallowed by the ocean. Tokyo and Shanghai, too, would vanish.

Sea levels stand to rise by a staggering 164 feet (50 meters) or more if the world goes for broke on fossil fuels, burning all its attainable resources. That's because the Antarctic Ice Sheet would melt entirely from the warming caused by those emissions, concludes a study published Friday in Science Advances. The researchers say their paper offers the first long-term look at how carbon dioxide emissions from oil, coal, and natural gas would affect the entire ice sheet.

"If we don't stop dumping our waste CO2 into the sky, land that is now home to more than billion people will one day be underwater," says study