This story was originally published by The Guardian and and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The melting of ice across the planet is accelerating at a record rate, with the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets speeding up the fastest, research has found. The rate of loss is now in line with the worst-case scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading authority on the climate, according to a paper published on Monday in the journal The Cryosphere. Thomas Slater, lead author and research fellow at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds, warned that the consequences would be felt around the world.