According to a new study, regardless of how much the world cuts back on carbon emissions, an essential and considerable chunk of Antarctica is essentially doomed to an unavoidable melt.

The lead author of the study notes that the full melt will take hundreds of years, but the gradual addition of nearly 6 feet to sea levels will reshape where and how people live in the future.

Using computer simulations, researchers calculated future melting of protective ice shelves jutting over Antarctica’s Amundsen Sea in western Antarctica.

Monday’s journal Nature Climate Change warns that even if future warming is limited to just a few tenths of a degree more, it will not be enough to prevent collapse of part of the ice sheet.