Antarctic Sea Ice at Record Low – Crypto News Aktuell in German

Sea ice cover in Antarctica shrank in February for the second straight year to the smallest area on record, continuing a decade-long decline, the European Union’s Climate Monitoring Service said on Tuesday.

On February 16, the ice-covered sea surface around the frozen continent shrank to 2.09 million square kilometers, the lowest level since satellite records began, according to figures provided to AFP by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

“Antarctic sea ice has reached its lowest extent in the 45-year record of satellite data,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S.

US government scientists also confirmed a new record last month, but gave an even lower figure of 1.79 million square kilometers, a difference Copernicus attributed to “different algorithms used to harvest sea ice.”

Sea ice concentrations during the summer in the southern hemisphere were well below average in all sectors of the Southern Ocean.

Amazingly, the record lows this year and 2022 are about 30% below the 1981-2010 average.

“These low sea ice conditions can have important implications for the stability of the Antarctic Ice Shelf and ultimately for global sea level rise,” Burgess said.

“Polar ice caps are a sensitive indicator of the climate crisis.”

Melting sea ice has no discernible effect on sea levels because the ice is already in seawater.

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But reduced ice cover is still a big problem because it is helping to accelerate global warming, including in the Arctic.

About 90% of the solar energy that hits white sea ice is reflected back into space. But when sunlight hits dark, unfrozen seawater, almost the same amount of that energy is absorbed instead, directly contributing to a warming of the planet.

Both the north and south polar regions have changed about 3 degrees compared to the late 19th century Celsius warmed, three times the global average.

But unlike Arctic sea ice, which has been declining by 3 percent annually since the late 1970s, Antarctic sea ice has remained relatively constant over the same period, albeit with large annual variations.

Until recently – for the past eight years – the minimum sea ice extent in the Southern Ocean has consistently been below the 1991-2020 average.

Antarctica experienced its first recorded heatwave in 2020, with an unprecedented 9.2°C above mean maximum. In March last year, a research center in East Antarctica saw temperatures rise 30 degrees above normal.

Recent ice cover during the southern summer has shrunk the most around West Antarctica, which is more vulnerable to the effects of global warming than much larger East Antarctica.

The minimum sea ice extent in the Arctic – 3.4 million square kilometers – was recorded in 2012, with the second and third lowest ice-covered areas recorded in 2020 and 2019, respectively.

In 2021, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is forecasting with “high confidence” that the Arctic Ocean will be virtually ice-free at least once every September by mid-century.