Last year Antartica’s ice was 1.6m sq km below average – the size of Britain, France, Germany and Spain combined. This week it had even less ice than that
Dr Will Hobbs, a sea ice researcher at the University of Tasmania, said it could take decades for the Antarctic ecosystem to recover from an event like last year.Dr Will Hobbs, a sea ice researcher at the University of Tasmania, said it could take decades for the Antarctic ecosystem to recover from an event like last year.is on the cusp of reaching a record winter low for a second year running, continuing an “outrageous” fall in the amount of Southern Ocean that is freezing over.
Scientists at the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership said the latest data showed this had been repeated in 2024. On 7 September the amount of frozen ocean was less than on the same date last year.While the winter record is not yet complete, and it is therefore not clear if the extent of sea ice for the season will be less than last year, the scientists said it was part of a body of evidence that the Antarctic system had moved to a “new state”.
Hobbs said at monthly and yearly timescales the atmosphere was the main driver of regional variability. “What’s different now is that warmer Southern Ocean temperatures are really having an impact on the sea ice,” he said. “We know that the past two years have been the warmest on record for the planet, with global temperatures more than 1.5C above pre-industrial for extended periods. This global warmth is now reflected in the oceans around the Antarctic.
The Antarctic winter typically starts in March and lasts until October. Dr Phil Reid, from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, said it was too early to definitively say whether the winter sea ice had reached its annual maximum level, but it was startling it had dropped so far below average in consecutive years.
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