With days passing on, global warming is becoming more serious threat for planet earth. The year 2017 itself has few incidents which can be taken as evidence that the earth's environment is affected seriously by global temperature. One of the major happenings regarding the effects of global warming is sinking of sea ice extent.
According to NASA, there is a decrease in the sea ice at both South Pole and the North Pole. The Arctic sea ice, at the North Pole, comes into sight reaching a record low wintertime maximum extent. Similarly, the sea ice around Antarctica, at the South Pole hits its lowest extent which has been ever recorded till now.
Both the records were recorded in the early week of March 2017. This can be considered as a serious threat for the future due to global warming. The event is also surprising for the scientists because the decrease in sea ice at both the poles has occurred after decades of moderate sea ice expansion.
Scroll Today News reported that usually, the sea ice reaches the minimum and maximum level in the month of March and September of every year respectively in Arctic Circle. In the case of Antarctic region, the calendar changes for the above event. Reports also say that the past winter had several factors which affected the growth of the sea ice, i.e. series of storms, warm temperatures and unfavorable winds for ice expansion.
"This year's maximum extent at the Arctic reached on March 7 at 14.42 million square kilometers and is 97, 00 square kilometers below the previous record low," a senior sea ice researcher said. "In Antarctica, this year's record low annual sea ice minimum of 815,000 square miles is 71,000 square miles below the previous lowest minimum extent in the satellite record," he added.
The European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 satellite reported some data, which reported Arctic sea ice much thinner this winter as compared to the past four years. The main part of the event is that area more than 2 million square kilometers of sea ice has been lost. This figure of the area is larger than Mexico.
