As if the public needed more evidence that climate change is real, now there’s one more item to tack on the list: This winter, Arctic sea ice extent reached a record low, and peaked earlier this year than it ever has before. NASA created a stunning visualization of ice developing over the northern pole—a network of thin, swirling sheets that just don’t reach as far as they used to.
New information from the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows Arctic sea ice reached a maximum extent of 5.61 million square miles this winter—50,000 square miles below the next lowest maximum recorded in 2011. As NASA illustrates, this is well short of the average maximum sea ice concentration observed in the 35 years prior, and the lowest of any year since satellite observation began in 1979.
The most drastic difference was found in the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan. This year’s maximum ice extent was 346.7 miles short of the previous 35-year average maximum. That’s nearly identical to the length of Utah.
This latest maximum occurred on February 25 of this year. (It took this long for climate scientists to be sure that the ice wouldn’t freeze any further this year.) Barring any aberrant global cold spike to hit the northern hemisphere—and hey, stranger things are happening—it will be one of the earliest maximums on record, 15 days earlier than the average.
Perhaps the silver lining here is that as it turns out, there’s very little relation between the maximum extent of Arctic ice in the winter, and the summer minimum. That means a low maximum won’t necessarily beget a low minimum. Conditions for the summer might look relatively normal yet—but we’re not betting on it.
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