Melt madness: Arctic sea ice shrinks to record springtime low
- Arctic sea ice reached a record low in March 2025, marking the lowest extent in the 47-year satellite record.
- The shrinking sea ice, attributed to rising global temperatures from burning fossil fuels, impacts global temperature regulation and weather patterns.
- The combined loss of sea ice in both polar regions equates to an area larger than the eastern United States.
The amount of springtime sea ice in the Arctic set a record low this month, continuing a trend of shrinking ice at the top of the world, scientists announced this week.
Specifically, March sea ice extent in the Arctic this month was the lowest in the 47-year satellite record, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado.
“This new record low is yet another indicator of how Arctic sea ice has fundamentally changed from earlier decades,” said NSIDC senior research scientist Walt Meier, in a statement. “But even more importantly than the record low is that this year adds yet another data point to the continuing long-term loss of Arctic sea ice in all seasons.”
What is sea ice?
Sea ice is frozen ocean water that has an annual cycle of melting during the summer and refreezing in winter. The sea ice floats on the ocean.
The region reaches its maximum extent of sea ice in March of each year, which then begins to melt. This process takes roughly six months.
The NSIDC said the measurement of sea ice taken Saturday, March 22, 2025, was 5.53 million square miles — around 30,000 square miles smaller than the lowest previous peak, set in 2017.
The shrinking sea ice is caused by rising global temperatures that stem from the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil, gas and coal.
Sea ice in the Arctic also helps regulate the planet’s temperature by influencing the circulation of the atmosphere. Recent studies have said that Arctic sea ice, along with Arctic temperatures, can affect weather patterns in the United States.
What about Antarctic sea ice?
Summer ice in the Antarctic retreated to 764,000 square miles on March 1, tying for the second lowest minimum extent ever recorded. That’s 30% below the 1.10 million square miles that was typical in the Antarctic prior to 2010.
According to NASA, the reduction in ice in both polar regions has led to another milestone — the total amount of sea ice on the planet reached an all-time low. Globally, ice coverage in mid-February of this year declined by more than a million square miles from the average before 2010.
Missing sea ice
Altogether, Earth is missing an area of sea ice large enough to cover the entire continental United States east of the Mississippi, NASA reported.
“We’re going to come into this next summer season with less ice to begin with,” said Linette Boisvert, an ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It doesn’t bode well for the future.”