‘Everyone should be concerned’: Antarctic sea ice reaches lowest levels ever recorded

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For 44 years, satellites have helped scientists track how much ice is floating on the ocean around Antarctica’s 18,000km coastline.

The continent’s fringing waters witness a massive shift each year, with sea ice peaking at about 18m sq km each September before dropping to just above 2m sq km by February.

But across those four decades of satellite observations, there has never been less ice around the continent than there was last week.

“By the end of January we could tell it was only a matter of time. It wasn’t even a close run thing,” says Dr Will Hobbs, an Antarctic sea ice expert at the University of Tasmania with the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership.

Map of Antarctica showing the duration in days of sea ice around the continent between February 2022 and February 2023 compared with the long-term average between 1981/82 and 2010/11. Red shows areas where ice was absent for longer than usual, and blue shows were ice was present for longer. Photograph: Dr Phil Reid, Bureau of Meteorology, Hobart: Data: Nasa

“We are seeing less ice everywhere. It’s a circumpolar…

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