Antarctic sea ice collapses
The ice around Antarctica falls to a record low and does not recover.
- When
- Known to
- ± 12 hours
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
- Where
- Antarctica · 75.0000° S, 0.0000° E
Sea ice extent hit a record minimum in February 2023 and then failed to regrow through the southern winter, falling six standard deviations below the mean — an excursion that should occur once in millions of years under the previous statistics. Antarctic sea ice had been stable or growing until 2016. Whether the system has changed regime is one of the sharpest open questions in climate science.