Humanity is leaving an indelible mark on the Earth and that mark is getting larger and larger.

With temperatures climbing every year and humanity’s appetite for fossil fuels and other activities that harm the environment, our polar ice caps and ice sheets are melting and the rate at which they’re melting should be a concern to us all.

This week NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other US government agencies published a report titled Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States.

The headline of the report is that the sea level along the US coastline will rise by between 25 and 30cm by 2050. What makes this all the more concerning is that this is the same rise in the sea level that has happened over the last 100 years.

Looking at the globe as a whole, the low end of the sea level rise is 20cm while the high is 43cm by the year 2050.

This is all very far away though so to put this into perspective today, the global mean sea level is rising 3.4mm every year, the mass of Greenland’s ice mass is decreasing by 275 gigatons a year and Antarctica’s ice mass is decreasing by 152 gigatons a year.

If that’s still not enough to worry you, the report below from France24 about the Brazilian resort town of Atafona disappearing into the sea should.

The change is slow, but if we don’t correct course soon, we are going to be left with regret.

“This report supports previous studies and confirms what we have long known: Sea levels are continuing to rise at an alarming rate, endangering communities around the world. Science is indisputable and urgent action is required to mitigate a climate crisis that is well underway,” Bill Nelson, NASA administrator said in a statement.

So what does a sea level rise of this proportion mean exactly?

According the Interagency Sea Level Rise Task Force, this rise will lead to an uptick in the frequency and intensity of high-tide coastal flooding. This is something that we already experience and it can lead to road closures and cause damage to infrastructure.

However, if greenhouse gas emissions and global temperatures continue to climb the severity of the sea level rising could exceed the projections we have before us today.

On that note, you can access NASA’s climate analysis tools and data here.