Scientists have sounded alarm over Antarctic sea ice reaching record low levels for the third time in six years. The sea level witnessed a drastic drop in the month of February this year, breaking the 2022 record.
On February 25 2022, the amount of sea ice dropped to 1.92m sq km – an all-time low recorded ever since satellite observations of ice floating in the ocean around Antarctica began in 1979.
But this record was already breached by February 12 this year, and by February 25, the ice level reached a new low of 1.79m sq km, beating the previous record by 136,000 sq km – an area double the size of Tasmania, reported the Guardian.
Dr Will Hobbs, an Antarctic sea ice expert at the University of Tasmania with the Australian Antarctic Programme Partnership, told Guardian that this was happening because of a “circumpolar event” and added that less ice is being witnessed everywhere.
He said that the large areas in the west of the continent had barely recovered from the previous year’s losses.
“Because sea ice is so reflective, it’s hard to melt from sunlight. But if you get open water behind it, that can melt the ice from underneath,” Hobbs added.
The scientist said that the new record has the polar scientists scrambling for answers.
Antarctica continent holds enough ice to raise sea levels by many metres if it was to melt. Though melting of sea ice doesn’t directly correspond to a rise in sea levels as it is already floating in the water, several scientists the Guardian spoke to have raised concern over the spill over effects it can have on the ecosystem.
Apparently, sea ice helps negate the effect of storms on ice attached to the coast. If it starts to disappear for longer, the increased wave action can weaken those floating ice shelves that themselves stabilise the massive ice sheets and glaciers behind them on the land.
“We don’t want to lose sea ice where there are these vulnerable ice shelves and, behind them, the ice sheets,” Prof Matt England, an oceanographer and climate scientist at the University of New South Wales, was quoted as saying.
“We are probably starting to see signs of significant warming and retreat of sea ice [in Antarctica]. To see it getting to these levels is definitely a concern because we have these potentially amplifying feedbacks.”
(With inputs from agencies)
