When scientists take account of the average sea ice extent for 1981-2010, this year’s ice cover is 471,000 square miles smaller. READ: Arctic sea ice reaches new record low mark for wintertime“We started from a low September minimum extent,” said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. In the Antarctic, this year’s record low annual sea ice minimum was 815,000 square miles. For the past two years, however, Antarctica saw record high sea ice extents and decades of moderate sea ice growth. “There’s a lot of year-to-year variability in both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, but overall, until last year, the trends in the Antarctic for every single month were toward more sea ice,” said Claire Parkinson, a senior sea ice researcher at NASA Goddard.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer March 23, 2017 03:00 UTC