Along with a strong Amundsen Sea Low, the weather conditions have brought warm air to the region on both sides of the Antarctic Peninsula. As noted in our previous post, a positive Southern Annular Mode has led to stronger-than-average westerly winds. As the Antarctic melt season is still in progress, depicted as a grey downward arrow, the linear trend and running average will change slightly.Įxtent has tracked well below last year’s melt season levels since mid-December. A five-year running average is shown in red. The linear trend line is in blue with a 0.9 percent per decade downward trend, which is not statistically significant. The grey diamond data point depicts the 2023 minimum, which is still preliminary, with further loss expected. This graph shows Antarctic annual sea ice minimum extent, depicted as black diamonds, from 1979 to 2023, based on a 5-day running average of daily extent. In past years, the annual minimum has occurred between February 18 and March 3, so further decline is expected. This year represents only the second year that Antarctic extent has fallen below 2 million square kilometers (772,000 square miles). This set a new record low, dropping below the previous record of 1.92 million square kilometers (741,000 square miles) set on Febru(Figure 1b). On February 13, 2023, Antarctic sea ice extent fell to 1.91 million square kilometers (737,000 square miles) (Figure 1a). Sea Ice Index data.Ĭredit: National Snow and Ice Data Center The gray areas around the median line show the interquartile and interdecile ranges of the data. The graph above shows Antarctic sea ice extent as of February 13, 2023, along with daily ice extent data for four previous years and the record high year.
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