Antarctica loses ice equivalent to 20 times the size of Madrid in just 30 years

An international team of researchers is testing the reliability of current climate models.

Understanding what is really happening with Antarctic glaciers has long been a puzzle full of pieces that didn’t quite fit together. Luckily, a group of scientists from the University of California at Irvine has managed to mark a before and after. They have collected no less than thirty years of data on the “contact line”, which is that critical point where the ice stops touching the ground and begins to float, creating a historical record that becomes the exam that every climate model must pass from now on if it wants to be taken seriously. As Eric Rignot rightly points out, the leader of the study is no longer much use in throwing predictions into the air if they cannot explain what has already happened. If a model is not capable of replicating those thirty years of real history, it is simply not valid. That’s the real value of this work: forcing researchers to go back to the drawing board, revise their calculations, and understand what physical pieces they were missing to make projections of sea level rise finally reliable.

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