Unusually severe storms in 2016 wrought the quickest meltdown of Antarctic sea ice ever seen during a Southern Hemisphere spring. This could explain why Antarctica’s sea ice extent hit a record low earlier this year.
Satellite images show that the extent of Antarctic sea ice decreased by an average of 75,000 square kilometers — almost the area of South Carolina — each day from September through December 2016. That was 18 percent faster than the previous record melt rate for this time of year and nearly 50 percent faster than average, researchers report online June 20 in Geophysical Research Letters.