2025 Antarctic sea ice third lowest on record

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AccuWeather Vice President of Forecast Operations Dan DePodwin and AccuWeather Climate Expert Brett Anderson discuss the top headlines related to climate change in the October 10 edition of Climate In The News.

Transcript

00:00We'll cover both the cold and hot side of climate change today.

00:05Our first finding in this case, Brett, from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

00:09They every year look at the amount of sea ice both in the Arctic and in this case the

00:12Antarctics or the Southern Hemisphere and they found that once again we have a very

00:17low amount of sea ice at the time of year where the maximum sea ice occurs in the Southern

00:21Hemisphere.

00:22Yeah, no surprise here.

00:23This is becoming a yearly event here pretty much.

00:26But yeah, across the Antarctic, our annual sea ice maximum was the third lowest on record

00:34here behind 2023 and 2024.

00:37Actually going back 10, 15 years or so, things were fairly flat.

00:40We didn't see much of a trend, but now we're suddenly seeing a significant decrease in Antarctic

00:45sea ice here.

00:46So, we talked about the Antarctic, the Southern Hemisphere.

00:48What types of trends have we seen in the Arctic recently?

00:50Well, the Arctic has been steadily declining for the past 20, 30 years or so.

00:55The 10th lowest on record, the annual minimum, which occurred on September 10th.

00:59So that's pretty significant in itself.

01:01But however, what's more important, the last 19 years have been the lowest 19 years on record

01:05across the Arctic in terms of sea ice extent.

01:08And the trend from 1979 to 2025 is about 12% decrease per decade of sea ice.

01:14So some clear signals here.

01:16And why does sea ice matter from a climate standpoint?

01:18It matters because the Arctic and the Antarctic are warming more rapidly compared to the rest

01:22of the planet, especially the Arctic region.

01:25And why is that?

01:26Well, because the loss of sea ice is opening up more water.

01:29Water is a darker color than snow and ice, therefore it absorbs more of the sun's energy

01:33and it heats up quicker.

01:34So certainly a feedback loop happening there.

01:36We'll turn now to our second story on the hot side of things from the International Institute

01:41for Environment and Development.

01:43They looked at the 40 most populous cities around the world, Brett, and they have a pretty

01:47striking finding of how much more frequent the hot days have been in recent decades.

01:51We've seen an increase.

01:52The number of days over 95 degrees, which is considered extreme heat, we've seen a 26%

01:58increase, Dan, since 1994.

02:01Washington, D.C. was one of nine cities last year that had their highest number of extremely

02:07hot days.

02:08And this seems to really span the whole world.

02:09There's some good statistics in here about places in Brazil like the capital, Brazil, Brasilia,

02:13about how they only had three days like this in the 90s into 2000s, but 40 of them in

02:18the last decade, same in parts of Europe like Madrid.

02:22What else stood out to you in this?

02:23Yeah.

02:24We saw that the top three years for extreme heat have all occurred in the past six years,

02:28so that's 2024, 2023, 2019, so that's very impressive there.

02:33So this obviously leads to the question about what should we do to adapt to this continued

02:36increase in number of hot days?

02:38What types of strategies are suggesting?

02:39Yeah.

02:40Well, of course, the heat makes it hard to sleep, of course, and then when we're tired,

02:43we don't, our production, our energy is lost.

02:45So what can we do?

02:47What can cities do?

02:48Well, we can plant more trees, which provides more shade, that's one thing.

02:52We can also try changing the color of our asphalt to more white color.

02:57The rooftops, more white color, that reflects more of the sun's heat, cools it.

03:01Another reason to really understand the impact of heat on your body, another reason to use

03:05the AccuWeather real fuel temperature, which includes not just temperature, but humidity

03:08and many other parameters.

03:09So certainly some significant impacts of heat and cold here on our climate.

03:14Thank you, Brett, for that insight.

03:15For other stories on climate, you can find that at accuweather.com slash climate.

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