Sea ice around Antarctica reached its lowest level on February 21, 2023, at 1.79 million square kilometers (691,000 square miles). To figure out extent, scientists job satellite observations of sea ice onto a grid and then include up the overall location of each cell that is at least 15 percent ice-covered. The yellow summary reveals the average sea ice degree for February from 1981– 2010.
Antarctica sea ice since February 21, 2023. Annotated with the 1981-2010 typical sea ice level.
The long-lasting pattern for sea ice in the south is still flat, while the international pattern points downward.
In February 2023, sea ice around Antarctica reached the most affordable degree ever observed because the start of the satellite record in 1979. However in spite of a number of recent years of low levels, the long-term pattern for sea ice in southern polar waters is basically flat; it is the decreases in sea ice at the other pole– in the Arctic– that are pressing the worldwide sea ice trend downward.
Sea ice around Antarctica reached its least expensive level on February 21, 2023, at 1.79 million square kilometers (691,000 square miles). Thats 130,000 square kilometers (50,000 square miles) below the previous record-low reached on February 25, 2022– a distinction that corresponds to an area about the size of New York state. It marks the 2nd time that researchers observed the ice diminishing listed below 2 million square kilometers.
Chart of the day-to-day Antarctic sea ice level in millions of square kilometers.
The map above reveals the ice extent on the day of its record low. To determine degree, scientists task satellite observations of sea ice onto a grid and then accumulate the total area of each cell that is at least 15 percent ice-covered. The yellow summary shows the median sea ice level for February from 1981– 2010. An average is the middle value; that is, half of the extents were bigger than the yellow line and half were smaller.
Amid year-to-year irregularity, sea ice trends in the Antarctic prior to 2016 were usually headed slightly upward in all months. Given that then, several years strike new record lows, consisting of 2017, 2022, and now 2023.
” There is some conversation about the Antarctic sea ice undergoing a regime-shift considering that 2016 towards an usually lower level, and that possibly this might be a reaction to international warming; that is, the warming signal is starting to be seen in the Antarctic sea ice above the year-to-year irregularity,” stated Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). “But it is difficult to say at this moment if it is a real shift and reaction to warming, or simply a temporal multi-year variation.”
NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using information from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
