Recently published research reveals that the entire Greenland ice sheet could potentially disappear completely in the next 1,000 years.

The melting ice sheet could cause sea levels to rise up to 22 feet by the year 3000.

A terrifying video by NASA's Operation IceBridge illustrates what this would look like and how it will transform Greenland's landscape.

Even if greenhouse gas emissions were to stabilize, the ice sheet could lose over half of its total mass in the coming years.

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Stretching 660 square miles in size, the Greenland ice sheet is the second largest permanently frozen ice surface in the world. In comparison, it is about the size of Alaska, which is also America's largest state. But researchers at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbank have now come to a worrying conclusion: the entire ice sheet could melt completely within the next 1,000 years – a transformation which has been illustrated in a shocking NASA video.

The study, which was published in "Science Advances", used data collected by NASA's Operation IceBridge, a campaign that set out to observe the changes occurring to polar ice caps in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Professor Andy Aschwanden and his team created three possible scenarios based on models illustrating the future development of the ice sheet. The three climate scenarios depend on how much greenhouse gas emissions will be present in the atmosphere in the coming years.

Read more: I took a ferry up the coast of Greenland for under $400 and despite it being brutally cold, it was a fantastic way to see some of the most dramatic scenery on earth.

While one model, which assumes a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, predicts a loss of 8-25% of the ice surface – consequently leading to a rise in sea level of up to 6 feet – other models predict an even gloomier future. Even if emissions were to stabilize over the next few years, Greenland's ice sheet would still lose 26-57% of its total mass by the year 3000. And if emissions continue to rise, Greenland will be ice-free in 1,000 years, according to the researchers. If this were to happen, sea levels could consequently rise by 17-23 feet.

Read more: In just one day last week, Greenland lost most than 2 billion tons of ice.

The study looks particularly at outlet glaciers, which according to the NASA website, are "river-like bodies of ice" connecting to the ocean that play a pivotal role in how exactly ice sheets melt. In the past, scientists have lacked the necessary data to represent their flow patterns, but the study has found that outlet glaciers could "account for up to 40% of Greenland's lost ice mass over the next 200 years".

By creating an updated model of the ice sheet, the researchers have shown that due to warming sea temperatures, outlet glaciers "flow faster, melt and get thinner quicker".

"Once we had access to satellite observations, we were able to capture the surface velocity of the whole Greenland ice sheet and see how that ice flows. We recognized that some outlet glaciers flow very fast — orders of magnitude faster than the interior of the ice sheet," Aschwanden told NASA.

Read more: Greenland is approaching the threshold of an irreversible melt, and the consequences for coastal cities could be dire.

If anything, NASA's video is a reminder that the future of our planet depends on the environmental choices made today. "If we continue as usual, Greenland will melt," Aschwanden said. "What we are doing right now in terms of emissions, in the very near future, will have a big long-term impact on the Greenland ice sheet, and by extension, if it melts, to sea level and human society."