"PARIS - Sea ice in Antarctica shrank to the smallest area on record in February for the second year in a row, continuing a decade-long decline, the European Union's climate monitoring service said Tuesday.
On February 16, the ocean surface covered by ice around the frozen continent shrank to 2.09 million square kilometres (800,000 square miles), the lowest level since satellite records began, according to figures provided to AFP by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
"Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest extent in the 45-year satellite data record," said Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of C3S.
US government scientists have also confirmed a new record last month but indicated an even lower figure of 1.79 million sq km, a difference Copernicus attributed to "different sea ice retrieval algorithms"."
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