Third time in six years: Antarctic sea ice reaches new record Low

Posted by Tsoku Maela on 7 March 2023

‘For 44 years, satellites have helped scientists track how much ice is floating on the ocean around Antarctica’s 18,000 km coastline’, writes Graham Readfearn in an article for The Guardian.

Third time in six years: Antarctic sea ice reaches new record Low

Picture: Leamus/Getty Images

According to Dr Will Hobbs, an Antarctic sea ice expert at the University of Tasmania with the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, ‘We are seeing less ice everywhere. It’s a circumpolar event’. Last year in the southern hemisphere summer of 2022, the amount of sea ice dropped to 1.92 million sq km on 25 February – an all-time low based on satellite observations that started in 1979. However, by 12 February this year, the 2022 record had already been broken, with the ice reaching a new record low of 1.79 million sq km on 25 February.

The melting of the sea ice has caused concern among polar scientists who have expressed worry about the fate of Antarctica, especially the ice on land, as the continent holds enough ice to raise sea levels by many metres if it were to melt.

The loss of sea ice could weaken the floating ice shelves that stabilize the massive ice sheets and glaciers on the land, increasing the probability of these ice shelves calving and, thus, allowing more grounded ice into the ocean. Sea ice also helps buffer the effect of storms on ice attached to the coast. The loss of sea ice could also have a knock-on effect on global climate change. Antarctica is hard to study due to the challenges of gathering data around a continent exposed to huge variations in wind and storms from all sides.

The downturn in sea ice in Antarctica is causing the scientific community to wonder if there’s a process related to global climate change. ‘It’s clear that reduced sea ice will have an impact. It’s going to have an impact on the continental ice because so much of the coast will be exposed,’ says Dr Ted Scambos, a sea ice expert at the University of Colorado Boulder.

 

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