Storms, warm seas drove sudden drop in Antarctic ice: study

Paris, France: Unusually strong winds and warm ocean water likely drove a rapid plunge in Antarctic sea ice in recent years, scientists said on Wednes...

Paris, France: Unusually strong winds and warm ocean water likely drove a rapid plunge in Antarctic sea ice in recent years, scientists said on Wednesday, shedding new light on a puzzling event.

While the Arctic sea ice area has been steadily declining, the story has been very different in Antarctica, where coverage hit a record high in 2015 before flipping to a record low only two years later.

Climate models struggled to explain this "unexpected and abrupt decline" of the magnitude witnessed in recent decades, wrote a global team of scientists in new research exploring this anomaly.

Understanding why matters because Antarctic sea ice is critical not just to ocean currents and local ecosystems but the climate, as its reflective surface bounces solar energy back into the atmosphere.

In the journal Nature Climate Change, scientists led by Theo Spira from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden said the rapid loss of sea ice was caused by forces working together rather than any single factor.