After years of reaching record highs, the streak is over for Antarctica.
The National Snow & Ice Data Center reported that the sea ice cover reached its yearly maximum on Oct. 6 for the continent, coming in at 18.83 million square kilometres, about 120,000 square kilometres above the average maximum daily extent over the 1981-2010 period.
This new maximum lands near the middle — coming in at 16th — of record Antarctica maximums over 37 years of satellite measurements.
For the past three years, the Antarctic sea ice growth has reached record highs.
“After three record high extent years, this year marks a return toward normalcy for Antarctic sea ice,” said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “There may be more high years in the future because of the large year-to-year variation in Antarctic extent, but such extremes are not near as substantial as in the Arctic, where the declining trend towards a new normal is continuing.”
The Arctic continues to see record ice melt, with nine of lowest sea ice extents occurring in the past nine years. In February, the Arctic sea maximum reached a record low.
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