Sea ice that covers the ocean around Antarctica hit a record low surface area in the winter, a preliminary analysis of US satellite data shows, and scientists fear the impact of climate change is increasing at the southern pole.
As the southern hemisphere transitions into spring, Antarctic sea ice had reached only a maximum size of 16.96 million sq km (6.55 million sq miles) by September 10, the US space agency, NASA, and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said on Monday.
“This is the lowest sea ice maximum in the 1979 to 2023 sea ice record by a wide margin,” said the NSIDC, a government-supported programme at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
At one point this year, sea ice had dropped to 1.03 million sq km (more than 397,000 sq miles), smaller than the previous record low and an area roughly the size of Texas and California combined.
“It’s a record-smashing sea ice low in the Antarctic,” NSIDC scientist Walt Meier said in comments published by NASA.
Source from www.aljazeera.com