While Europeans are shivering in unusually sub-zero temperatures, January was the warmest on record worldwide. The north polar regions, in particular, feel the effects. Temperatures there are up to six degrees above the long-term average. According to data from the Alfred Wegener Institute’s „Meereisportal“ (Sea Ice Portal), the Arctic ice will only cover an average of 13.19 million square kilometers of sea in January 2025. The only winters with even less coverage were 2017 and 2018. The Canadian Hudson Bay, the northern Barents Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk near Kamchatka are particularly affected by the shrinking ice. The long-term trend is clear: sea ice is shrinking by 2.6 percent per decade.