The impact of climate change is melting ice faster than ever and pushing up sea levels, which will have big implications for New Zealand.
A panel of United Nations scientists have released a report on the impact of climate change across the globe. They say that sea levels may rise more than a metre by next century if carbon emissions aren't cut.
The main driver for rising sea levels is the faster than expected ice melt in Antartica.
'We're all in big trouble': UN climate panel outlines dire future in new report
Not only will it affect sea levels in New Zealand but water supply and tourism too.
"Here in New Zealand the number of high ocean state days will increase, the sea level when we experience storms will go up. The coastal effects that we get will become more intense," Dean of surveying at Otago University Christina Hulbe says.
Professor James Higham from the University of Otago's Tourism Department says melting glaciers have implications for visitor flows down the West Coast.
"A study produced earlier this year indicated that when access to the glaciers on the West Coast is limited it costs the economy of the West Coast $3 million a day," Professor Higham says.
Tourism operators on the West Coast have already changed the way tourists experience the glaciers.
Glacier Country Tourism Group's Ashley Cassin says: "The big walk on walk off trips were changed and lost. The way clients get on the ice now is with a helicopter and they do a heli hike there so that product has completely changed which is quite significant."
But making adaptations for climate change can bring more problems.
"Helicopters are very intensive and the use of helicopters in the tourism product drives and accelerates further climate change," says Professor Higham.
It's a never-ending cycle of environmental harm which the UN’s climate panel says only can be limited with radical changes to human behaviour.
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