Climate in Numbers: negative record in Antarctica

At first glance, the trend looks like the one we know from the other end of the world: The extent of sea ice off Antarctica is at an all-time low as winter begins there. So far, 2.1 million square kilometers less seawater has frozen than the long-term average since satellite measurements began in 1979: An area as large as Greenland or about six times the size of Germany, reports the latest „Sea Ice Portal,“ compiled by the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) and others. By the end of June, 12.4 million square kilometers of the southern ocean were covered with ice.