Antarctic Sea Ice Is at Record Lows. Is It an Alarming Shift?

Since the late 1970s, satellites have been spying on Antarctica’s sea ice, watching the whiteness expand and contract with the seasons. But they’ve never seen the ice quite like it is right now. Or rather, the lack of it—levels have fallen to record lows. “Every single day so far in 2023, we’ve observed sea ice that’s been below average,” says climate scientist Zachary Labe of Princeton University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who created the graph below. The …