[17] Levy contributed to a report by the World Meteorological Organisation which recorded that globally averaged concentrations of CO2 reached 403.3 parts per million (ppm) in 2016 up from 400ppm in 2015 and this was likely to see dangerous temperature increases by the end of the 21st century.

[21] In 2007 the ANDRILL team drilled to a depth of 1,138.54 metres (3,735.4 ft) in the Southern McMurdo Sound in Antarctica and recovered sedimentary rock samples that showed a record of the last 13 million years of "glacial and climatic variation of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and Ross Sea region".

[25][26] Frank Rack from the University of Nebraska who also worked on the team, explained that drilling into an earlier time could show the transition of Antarctica from being ice-free about 40 million years ago, to the creation of the ice sheet.

[27] Levy said the research showed that the ice sheets were highly sensitive to relatively small changes in CO2, and this information allowed scientists to consider Earth's potential future if greenhouse gas levels and temperatures continued to rise and large parts of Antarctica became ice-free.

[7] As the leader of the program, Levy acknowledged that it was difficult to make predictions of future sea levels because the New Zealand coastline was continually moving up and down, but concluded that the reducing emissions and avoiding melting of the ice sheets was key to overriding these movements of the shoreline.

[33] Levy also noted the highest subsidence rates were along the Wairarapa coast, and predicted that [along that coastline], "sea levels could rise by well over one and a half metres by 2100...[following]...the least optimistic climate change scenario".

[35] The SeaRise team was awarded the 2019 Prime Minister's Science Prize for highlighting the relationship between global warming, melting Antarctic ice and rising sea levels.

Their prediction that the melting of the Southern Continent could cause the flooding of coastal cities and regions, helped support the targets of the 2015 Paris Agreement, and Levy said he was humbled "because we love what we do and we feel we're doing something important.