Arctic and Antarctic sea ice reached alarming lows in 2024, highlighting the accelerating impacts of climate change on polar regions.
Record Low Arctic Sea Ice
Arctic sea ice retreated to near-historic lows this summer, reaching its likely minimum extent for the year on September 11, 2024. This observation from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) marks a continued trend of diminishing ice cover in the Arctic Ocean that has persisted for decades.
This year’s minimum extent, the seventh lowest in the satellite record, remained above the all-time low of 3.39 million square kilometers (1.31 million square miles) set in September 2012. However, since the late 1970s, sea ice loss has averaged about 77,800 square kilometers (30,000 square miles) per year.
“Today, the overwhelming majority of ice in the Arctic Ocean is thinner, first-year ice, which is less able to survive the warmer months. There is far, far less ice that is three years or older now,” said Nathan Kurtz, chief of the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Measurements of ice thickness collected with spaceborne altimeters, including NASA’s ICESat and ICESat-2 satellites, have shown that much of the oldest, thickest ice has already been lost. Research from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory found that in the central Arctic, fall sea ice now hovers around 1.3 meters (4.2 feet) thick, down from a peak of 2.7 meters (8.8 feet) in 1980.
Antarctic Sea Ice at Second Lowest Extent
Sea ice around Antarctica also reached near-record-low levels in 2024. The ice likely reached its maximum extent for the year on September 19, 2024, when growth stalled out at 17.16 million square kilometers (6.63 million square miles). This year’s maximum was the second lowest in the satellite record and remained above the record winter low of 16.96 million square kilometers (6.55 million square miles) set in September 2023. The average maximum extent between 1981 and 2010 was 18.71 million square kilometers (7.22 million square miles).
Prior to 2014, Antarctic sea ice was relatively stable. but that has changed” said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NSIDC “It appears that global warming has come to the Southern Ocean,”Meier said
The loss of sea ice increases heat in the Arctic, where temperatures have risen about four times the global average, Kurtz said
Learn more about the impact of climate change on polar regions andglobal warming.