Antarctic sea ice posts third-smallest winter peak on record
Scientists call the persistent lows concerning, while Arctic ice shrank to its joint-10th-lowest summer minimum.
Antarctic sea ice reached its third-smallest winter peak in 48 years of satellite records this month, according to provisional data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in the United States.
The ice peaked Sept. 14 at 17.59 million square kilometers. The NSIDC cautioned that the data is preliminary and that extent often fluctuates sharply near the seasonal maximum.
After several decades of stable or increasing winter ice around Antarctica, "it is concerning to see these low values persisting," said Lettie Roach, a polar climate scientist at Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute. She said more years of observations are needed to tell whether the decline is a structural shift driven by human-caused warming or natural variability.
Clare Eayrs, a researcher at the Korea Polar Research Institute, said all five of the lowest July extents on record have occurred since 2022, and all four of the lowest August extents since 2023.
In the Arctic, sea ice hit its summer minimum Sept. 12 at 4.60 million square kilometers, tying for 10th-lowest on record. That is still lower than any minimum before 2007, Roach said. Zack Labe, a scientist at Climate Central, said cloudier, cooler weather over the central Arctic limited melting this summer, but the long-term trend is "clearly downward."
Monitoring is also getting harder. A widely used Arctic ice-thickness dataset stopped updating after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ended an air-pressure record it relied on in March.
This brief is based on reporting by Ayesha Tandon, published Sept. 25, 2026, by Carbon Brief. Read the original: https://www.carbonbrief.org/concerning-low-sea-ice-persists-as-antarctic-hits-third-lowest-winter-peak
This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by an editor before publication.
