Predicting the extent of Arctic sea ice in September has significant implications for climate change and shipping in the ...

Antarctic sea ice is typically at its smallest in late February or early March, toward the end of summer in the Southern Hemisphere. It's at its largest in September as winter comes to an end.

Arctic sea ice extent in May declined at a slightly faster pace compared to average. In Antarctica, the Bellingshausen Sea ...

There is currently less sea ice in the Antarctic than at any time in the forty years since the beginning of satellite observation: in early February 2023, only 2.20 million square kilometres of ...

which combines the amount of sea ice present in the Arctic and Antarctic, hit a new low in early February and remained below the previous record from 2023 for the rest of the month. In particular ...

For instance, a warm fall could weaken sea ice and a warm winter and spring could prevent it from forming. If these weather events happen three years in a row, or more, that could lead to an ice ...

When sunlight finally returns to the region for a few months in early spring, algae blooms appear across vast areas on the bottom of the sea ice. Arctic sea ice algae are among the best-adapted ...

As many biologists have feared, the unseasonably early disappearance of Antarctica’s winter sea ice last year proved disastrous for the species. Get Boiling Point, our newsletter exploring ...

it predicted that Arctic sea ice would all but disappear by 2035. That is sooner than many forecasts, within the bounds of others—but the forecast of an early ice loss now seems more realistic.

In early 2024, Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, also told USA TODAY that the trend in Antarctic sea ice had been effectively flat since the late 1970s.

The sea ice is melting earlier in the spring and freezing later in the winter -- confining polar bears to land for longer periods, Molnar said. "They're really tightly linked to the sea ice ...

even though the sea ice there melts away early in the year. These bears have found a way to supplement their limited sea ice supply by hunting on freshwater ice that comes from glaciers on land.