It’s not breaking news to say that our planet’s vitally important areas of ice are shrinking – or, more accurately, melting.

Whether it’s ice caps and glaciers that are melting or ground ice in Antarctica, the ice is disappearing at an astonishing rate – and our planet is paying the price.

That’s because the melting ice has to go somewhere – and that somewhere is into our oceans, where sea levels rise significantly, causing flooding on land and extreme storm surges, as well as biodiversity loss, weakening ocean currents, and the release of greenhouse gases from permafrost.

In other words, the more it melts, the worse things are going to get, as tipping point triggers tipping point amidst our ever-more-serious climate crisis.

And though we’ve known that ice, especially the ground ice in Antarctica, is melting for decades, we’ve never truly understood how much ice is being lost.

But thanks to a decades-long study from the University of California, Irvine,  which was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we can now visualise and quantify the amount of grounded ice lost in Antarctica – and it’s not a pretty picture.

Using satellite data from the last thirty years, the researchers were able to map how the ice sheets have changed in Antarctica, noting that though some areas are less affected, since 1996 the ice in West Antarctica has been the most affected, with the quantity of ice lost across glaciers was the most harrowing, as Eric Rignot explained in a statement:

“Where warm ocean water is pushed by winds to reach glaciers, that’s where we see the big wounds in Antarctica. It’s like the balloon that’s not punctured everywhere, but where it is punctured, it’s punctured deep.”

In fact, every three years, the researchers explain, Antarctica loses an amount of grounded ice equivalent to the size of Greater Los Angeles, with it retreating around 442 square kilometers every year.

With this in mind, it’s high time that we do all we can to prevent any further warming of our climate, and any further damage to our environment since, as Rignot continued, things are already bad but – if nothing is done – could eventually become a lot worse:

“The flip side is that we should perhaps feel fortunate that all of Antarctica isn’t reacting right now, because we would be in far more trouble. But that could be the next step.”

Every one of us could do more, but it’s up to our governments and lawmakers now to step up and stop this.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about the mysterious “pyramids” discovered in Antarctica. What are they?