The giant donut of ice encircling Antarctica is volatile.
This ring of sea ice around the continent — which grows each winter and largely melts each summer — had been gradually increasing in size for 36 years, since reliable satellite measurements came online in 1979. But in late 2014, things changed dramatically. Between 2014 and 2017, the average sea ice extent plummeted, each year losing an area of ice (280,000 square miles) larger than the size of France.
“It’s just a huge decrease,” marveled NASA scientist Claire Parkinson, who for over 40 years has used satellites to track sea ice trends in Earth’s frigid polar worlds. Read more…
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Source : What to know about the huge losses of Antarctic sea ice
