Antarctic Sea-Ice Switch: Safeguarding Our Climate Future

While global warming has caused Arctic sea-ice extent to plummet by 12% per decade, Antarctic sea ice continued to expand, dominated by the Ross Sea region. But since 2016, Ross Sea region sea ice has declined unexpectedly and sharply—Antarctic sea-ice loss over 3 years was equivalent to 30 years of sea-ice loss in the Arctic.  

These recent, sharp declines might indicate a transition to new, more extreme, inter-annual fluctuations or the beginning of a long-term declining trend, with potential to accelerate a multitude of global climate change impacts.

Is humanity at the brink of a critical tipping point of Antarctic environmental change?