Inhospitable polar conditions continue challenging scientists' ability to gather data and make precise polar forecasts vital for knowing our climate future. But it may be even more challenging to raise public awareness and political will to reduce carbon emissions and reverse polar ice loss before it passes dangerous tipping points.

Sea ice extent is at record, and near record, lows for this time of year in both polar regions, leaving the planet increasingly vulnerable to the cascading effects of global warming.

This March, the Arctic sea ice winter maximum reached its lowest extent in the 47-year satellite record, while the Antarctic sea ice summer minimum vied for the second lowest recorded extent in nearly five decades, according to data from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

With less sea ice to reflect solar radiation, and more open ocean to absorb and store heat, the polar cooling system that helps protect the planet from higher temperatures will increasingly become dysfunctional. Recent climate models predict daunting scenarios of irreversible ecosystem change at Earth's poles, with those drastic changes in polar regions rippling out to impact the rest of the world.

"The Arctic and the Antarctic are really different systems, but anthropogenic global warming is the overall factor that's leading to less ice in the north and the south," said Walt Meier, an NSIDC senior research scientist.

On March 22, 2025, Arctic sea ice likely reached its maximum extent for this winter at 14.33 million square kilometers (5.53 million square miles). This year's maximum extent is 1.31 million km² (506,000 mi²) below the 1981 to 2010 average maximum of 15.65 million km² (6.04 million mi²). This year is also 80,000 km² (31,000 mi²) below the previous lowest maximum record of 14.41 million km² (5.56 million mi²) set on March 7, 2017, according to NSIDC data.

On March 1, 2025, Antarctic sea ice likely reached a minimum summer extent of 1.98 million km² (764,000 million mi²), the fourth consecutive year that Antarctic sea ice has sunk to a minimum below 2.0 million km² (772,000 million mi²). To date, the record summer low, based on satellite data, was 1.79 million km² (691,000 million mi²) reached on February 21, 2023.

The loss of sea ice due to climate change has already reduced the polar planetary cooling effect by as much as 15% since the 1980s, according to one analysis. In addition, the lowest 18 Arctic summer sea ice extents on record have all occurred in the last 18 years (2007-2024), with the all-time record low set in 2012. And while conditions have been relatively stable for those 18 years, without another record like that set in 2012, today's ice is far younger, thinner and less resilient than before.

"Maybe we've been lucky for the last 18 years in that we haven't had the right conditions in the summer [for a new sea ice extent record low], which is really key for how much ice gets lost," Meier said. "It's almost like we're waiting for the other shoe to drop."

That other shoe may drop sooner than expected, according to a recent review that describes a near-future Arctic that "would be transformed beyond contemporary recognition" in coming decades. Scientists modeled the impact of climate change in the Arctic (projected to warm to 2.7° Celsius, or 4.8° Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by 2100, if all nations meet their Paris Agreement targets). The review forecasts widespread ecosystem destruction with a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean, massive permafrost loss, and increasingly common surface melting temperatures in Greenland.

"The loss of the summer ice cover is one of our most visible signs of climate change and will be the component of the cryosphere to first go into a new state whereby we lose the ice in summer and it regrows in winter," Julienne Stroeve, an NSIDC polar climate scientist and lead author of the review, wrote in an email to Mongabay. "Unstoppable ice loss from Greenland is probably the most concerning tipping point, and one that has to be watched closely as this represents significant sea level rise."

While much of the Arctic Ocean has seen open water at some point over the last 18 years, a sea area just north of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago has remained a historic holdout of year-round ice. Dubbed the "last ice area," this frozen stronghold is home to iconic Arctic wildlife: polar bears, beluga whales and ringed seals, among others.

But even this ice bastion seems unlikely to last. Under continually warming conditions; climate models predict the central Arctic Ocean could be seasonally ice-free, with less than 15% of ice cover by 2035, a mere 10 years from now. A new study finds that once that point is reached, it could take as little as six years for the very last sea ice north of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago to disappear seasonally too.

While the Arctic has been warming up to four times faster the rest of the world (largely due to the Arctic Ocean albedo effect), the more isolated Antarctic has until recently been somewhat protected by winds and ocean currents that push away the effects of the rest of the warming world.

But in a disturbing trend, Antarctic sea ice extent has turned negative since 2016, Meier noted. "Although sea ice records have historically been more variable at the southern pole, the recent series of low years may beg the question if this decline is significant," he said.

Due to continued warming, Antarctic ice shelves have begun shedding more fresh meltwater than ever into the Southern Ocean, an effect that could weaken one of the world's key ocean currents, according to a recent modeling study.

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current moves clockwise around the continent and influences heat, carbon dioxide and nutrient exchanges in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. An estimated 20% slowdown in this critical current could speed up Antarctic ice shelf melt and alter worldwide weather patterns.

However, predicting the long-term future of Antarctic sea ice remains tricky. Satellite observations only go back to 1979, not long enough to understand whether the extreme variations seen within the last decade are "normal" for Antarctic sea ice, or if recent observations represent a sudden change, wrote Marilyn Raphael, a geographer and Southern Hemisphere climatologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, in an email to Mongabay.

To put these southern sea ice variations in greater context, Raphael and her research team reconstructed sea ice extent trends before the satellite record by analyzing historical station data and known relationships between the atmosphere, ocean and sea ice. Their study concluded that Antarctic sea ice is undergoing a structural change. But accurate long-range predictions remain elusive, and will require a shift from statistical to physical climate modeling, if they are to detail the changes in factors that drive sea ice change.

Remote, inhospitable polar landscapes have always made it difficult to gather the detailed data scientists need to input into their models. Despite these data gaps and uncertainties, researchers continue striving because they know accurate sea ice monitoring matters for the global environment, Indigenous polar communities, uniquely ice-adapted wildlife, polar fisheries, and to better understand how sea ice loss will impact strategically important polar shipping routes, national security, and even the global economy.

But in a world suffering tremendous political upheaval and conflict, it's hard for polar researchers to get the public's attention and raise concerns with policymakers to conserve these frigid regions.

If the cryosphere collapses at the poles, "sea level rise is one immediate impact that would be felt around the world. And when people have to relocate because of sea level rise, then they may realize why it was important to keep the polar regions intact," Stroeve wrote. "[I]ncreased Arctic warming ... impacts everyone around the planet."

With so many Earth processes at play, "the challenge is ... to tease out which extreme weather event is a direct result of Arctic ice melt," she added. "Scientists probably need to do a better job communicating the role that the polar regions play in our weather patterns."

Banner image: Polar bear mother with two cubs on a snowy sandbank in northern Alaska. Image by Hans-Jurgen Mager via Unsplash (Public domain).

With climate change, cryosphere melt scales up as a threat to planetary health

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