The sea ice cover in the Arctic and Antarctic hit new record lows for this time of year, marking the smallest polar ice caps in the 38-year satellite record, US government scientists said Wednesday.
In March, the Arctic ice sheet should be at its biggest, but on March 7 the ice cover reached "a record low wintertime maximum extent," said a statement by the US space agency NASA.
Data from the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, also showed that on March 3, "sea ice around Antarctica hit its lowest extent ever recorded by satellites at the end of summer in the Southern Hemisphere."
The disappearing sea ice comes as the planet has marked three years in a row of record-breaking heat, raising new concerns about the accelerating pace of global warming and the need to curb burning of fossil fuels which spew heat-trapping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
The ice floating in the Arctic Ocean grows and shrinks on a seasonal cycle, reaching its largest size in March and its smallest at the end of the summer melt in September.
This year's Arctic maximum spanned 5.57 million square miles. That is 37,000 square miles below the previous record low in 2015.
The ice in the Antarctic also follows a seasonal cycle but its maximum comes in September and its minimum around February.
In the Antarctic, this year's record low annual sea ice minimum was 815,000 square miles. That was 71,000 square miles below the previous lowest minimum extent in the satellite record, which occurred in 1997, said NASA.