Arctic Sea Ice at Record Low

The Antarctic and the Arctic the sea ice extent seems to be at another new record low.
(Image Courtesy of http://sppiblog.org/news/antarctic-sea-ice-expands-to-new-record)
In the article, sea ice extent sinks to record lows at both poles, the author Maria-José Viñas explains that in 1979 polar sea ice covered 6.26 million square miles of the ocean; it has lost a chunk larger than Mexico. The polar sea ice shrinks and grows every summer and winter, unfortunately the amount it grows by every year has gotten smaller and the shrinking amount larger. Within the last four decades, the winter Antarctic sea ice extent has shrunk by 2.8% per decade, that’s 11.2% all together. The summer amount is even worse it has gone down by 13.5% per decade, with all four decades put together that is 54%. This years new record low doesn’t mean anything for sure, a few more years of data needs to be collected before being able to tell if this is significant change, or if it's just a bad year for the poles.

"This winter, a combination of warmer-than-average temperatures, winds unfavorable to ice expansion, and a series of storms halted sea ice growth in the Arctic." -Maria-José Viñas

Arctic temperatures in autumn and winter, then grows again until typically March.


https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2569/sea-ice-extent-sinks-to-record-lows-at-both-poles/

Prepared by Ryan

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