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The collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) may have occurred sporadically and chaotically during the last 1,000,000 years. An ice sheet collapse occurs when ice flow turns a partly grounded, partly floating ice sheet into an entirely floating ice sheet. The random nature of these collapses results from the slow equilibration time of the basal till's distribution. Attempts at forecasting new collapses due to global warming must incorporate the irregularity that has marked the collapse of WAIS in the past.

Ice sheet modelling experiments on two large, but temporary, glacial meltwater inflows show that the breaking up of the Eurasian ice sheet (EIS) led to the first of the two meltwater inflows. The increase in the rise of the sea-level was caused when the ice sheet moved quickly toward iceberg-calving margins, and not when the ice-sheet melted.