Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest maximum extent on record on Sept. 10 at a time when the ice cover should have been growing at a much faster pace during the darkest and coldest months.
Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest maximum extent on record on Sept. 10 at a time when the ice cover should have been growing at a much faster pace during the darkest and coldest months.
Sea ice around Antarctica reached its lowest winter maximum extent on Sept. 10, 2023, at 6.5 million square miles (16.96 million square kilometers), according to researchers at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). That’s 398,000 square miles (1.03 million square kilometers) below the previous record-low reached in 1986—a difference that equates to roughly the size of Texas and California combined. The average maximum extent between 1981 and 2010 was 7.22 million square miles (18.71 million square kilometers).
The map at the top of this page shows the sea ice extent on September 10, 2023. “It’s a record-smashing sea ice low in the Antarctic,” said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NSIDC. “Sea ice growth appears low around nearly the whole continent as opposed to any one region.”
Read more at: NASA Earth Observatory
Photo Credit: Lauren Dauphin
