Ice roughly the size of the Northern Territory in Australia has disappeared from the Antarctic as sea ice continues to drop to “alarming” historically low levels.
Satellite data shows the sea ice surrounding Antarctica has fallen below previously recorded winter levels, with scientists warning it could have significant consequences.
“It’s so far outside anything we’ve seen,” Walter Meier, from the National Snow and Ice Data Center told the BBC.
“It’s almost mind-blowing.”
The latest data shows the ice floating on the surface of the Southern Ocean currently measures less than 6.5 million square miles.
It’s a drop of 579,000 square miles from the September average, roughly equivalent to the size of the Northern Territory in Australia.
Dr. Ariaan Purich, a climate scientist from Monash University said “everyone should be concerned” with the decline in sea ice, which provides a habitat for marine life and helps regulate temperatures.
“Sea ice is white and this means that it’s highly reflective so incoming sunlight that hits it is reflected back to space and this keeps a surface cold,” she told news.com.au.
“If we have less sea ice, this means that more sunlight is going to be absorbed by the surface ocean, and this is going to cause it to warm faster and this can actually amplify global warming.”
Dr. Purich said while we’ve been in a low sea ice state since 2016, this year had been “unlike any other” on the observational record.
“In June and July, we had a lot less sea ice coverage around Antarctica than what you usually have. It was around [965,000 square miles] less than usual in the Southern Ocean so this is the size of Western Australia.”
A study co-authored by Dr. Purich, published last week, found ocean warming is one factor behind the decline.
“We’ve now shown that the Southern Ocean has been warming over the past couple of decades, and this warming is because of increasing greenhouse gases,” she explained.
“It’s alarming, because of the scale of the changes … And this highlights the urgency of acting on climate change.
“Our world is changing, and we want to minimize it. So we really need to urgently cut emissions as fast as we can and as much as we can to minimize these big changes to the future.”