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The Antarctic ice sheet has shrunk to the smallest surface area on record in another sign that the accelerating pace of climate change is hitting some of the coldest regions the hardest.
The ice surrounding the continent has retreated to 1.97 million square kilometers, preliminary satellite data from the National Sea Ice Data Center in Colorado showed on Monday. That’s below the previous record of 2.1 million square kilometers set in 2017.
“It is terrifying to witness this frozen ocean melting down,” said Laura Meller, a polar adviser with nonprofit organization Greenpeace. “The consequences of these changes extend to the whole planet, impacting marine food webs around the globe.”
The findings add to signs that global temperature changes are becoming more extreme. The past eight years were the hottest on record, with 2021 ranking as the sixth-warmest, according to U.S. government data. The poles are suffering especially, with Arctic sea ice contracting by an average of 13% every decade since 1979.
At the South Pole, the latest data provide yet more evidence of “climate breakdown,” with some parts of the region warming faster than anywhere else in the world, Greenpeace said. The knock-on effects include rising sea levels, disruption to wildlife migration patterns and — as the reflective surface area of ice is reduced — even quicker warming.
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned last year that the West Antarctic ice sheet would “be lost almost completely and irreversibly over multiple millennia” with sustained warming levels between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius.
In a separate study published Tuesday, researchers led by Raul Cordero of the University of Santiago found that melting ice in Antarctica can also be attributed to so-called black carbon, which is produced by vessels, planes and diesel generators from tourism and research activities in the region. It results in as much as 23 millimeters of additional snow melt each summer in some areas.
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