Antarctic sea ice levels reached record lows in June, WMO says

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Monday (July 10) that the Antarctic sea ice levels reached record lows in June at 17 per cent below average. According to a report by the news agency Reuters, WMO said that global sea surface temperatures were at record highs for the time of the year in May and June. It warned that the warming of the world's oceans was spreading faster beyond their surface.

Addressing a press conference in Geneva on Monday, Michael Sparrow, the head of WMO's climate research division said, "This really is completely unprecedented, this kind of reduction in sea ice that we've seen around the Antarctic."

"The Antarctic region is normally thought of as being relatively stable. It's much colder than the Arctic. We're used to seeing these big reductions in sea ice in the Arctic, but not in the Antarctic. It's around about five standard deviations for the mathematicians around here, below what we would expect or we have seen in the past. And this is a massive decrease," Sparrow added.

'Scientific community struggling'

He said the scientific community was struggling to a certain extent to keep up. "I see a lot of things online in social media with scientists being incredibly concerned about particularly the ocean temperatures and the reduction in sea ice extent, because we have to remember that the oceans absorb more than 90 per centof the excess heat that humans put into the atmosphere because of greenhouse gases. That's where we need to make these reductions," Sparrow told reporters.

The WMO official pointed out that if the oceans were warming considerably, that would have a knock-out effect on the atmosphere, on sea ice and ice worldwide.

"There's a lot of concerns from the scientific community and a lot of catch-up in the scientific community trying to understand these incredible changes we're seeing at the moment. And it's very concerning," Sparrow further told reporters.

The WMO said that June was drier than average over much of North America. And as per the Copernicus Climate Change Service, June was also drier in Russia, the Horn of Africa, most of southern Africa, South America, and regions of Australia.

Meanwhile, the WMO also said Arctic sea ice levels were slightly below average, but well above the June values from the past eight years.

(With inputs from agencies)

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