Climate scientists warned on Tuesday that sea level rise could exceed one meter by 2100 if governments fail to control global warming effectively, said reports from Copenhagen.

"The upper range of sea level rise by 2100 could be in the range of about one meter, or possibly more," said a statement released by climate scientists at a three-day gathering in Copenhagen from Monday in preparation for the UN Climate Change Conference due in December in Denmark.

The estimate almost doubles the projection of 18 cm to 59 cm by the end of the century made in previous studies.

"In the lower end of the spectrum it looks increasingly unlikely that sea level rise will be much less than 50 cm by 2100," the statement said.

"This means that if emission of greenhouse gases is not reduced quickly and substantially, even the best case scenario will hit low lying coastal areas housing one in ten humans on the planet."

The new study included the loss of ice from the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets, according to the statement.

"The ice loss in Greenland has accelerated over the last decade," Konrad Steffen, director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, was quoted as saying.

"The upper range of sea level rise by 2100 might be above one meter or more on a global average, with large regional differences depending where the source of ice loss occurs," Steffen concluded.

(Xinhua News Agency March 11, 2009)