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c/science · by Canigou@jlai.lu · 3d

Is something happening to Antarctica's ice sheet ?

Look at this dip during the last week !
Source : ClimateReanalyser.org and NSIDC
Could it be an anomaly with satellite imaging, a random statistical blip, or is something huge just about to start ?

149 points · 56 comments · view on lemmy.world

56 Comments

edinbruh@feddit.it · 71 pts · 3d (8 replies)

I have no idea what this data is, but I have the gut feeling that we are fucked

Flower@sh.itjust.works · 32 pts · 3d (2 replies)

Not completely fucked yet, but being fucked a bit more every year. But fixing things means doing unpopular stuff and not being elected next time.

bedwyr@piefed.ca · 10 pts · 3d

That we are not completely fucked yet on climate change has been false for quite a while.

Factoring in our societies, there was never any chance we would change, and feedback loops are already amplifying, that is what will sink us. The permafrost melting will overwhelm the planet's ability to absorb carbon. Yay for anaroebic life!

SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org · 5 pts · 3d

I honestly believe we are fucked. Even if he would reach net 0 today we would still be fucked.

Eq0@literature.cafe · 14 pts · 3d (2 replies)

This has been my gut reaction for the last years of climate related news, lately extending to all other news as well….

edinbruh@feddit.it · 13 pts · 3d (1 reply)

I know, Farage winning against Binface has been a shock for me as well

bedwyr@piefed.ca · 4 pts · 3d

Binface just showed us a path to reform candidates though. He got solid numbers, 26 percent or something. With a blended joke/real candidate, we could win.

Regardless the US needs this organization of joke candidates that the UK has. I forget what they call it. Loony something.

dumnezero@piefed.social · 5 pts · 3d

this is showing the history of area (quantity) of sea covered by ice around Antarctica (South), with each curve being a different year.

In this context, less sea ice is bad news. It is winter there, so the overall ice is still strong. Summer is what matters most (you can see the months on the chart.) Although, leaving winter with less sea ice can make the summer ice situation worse.

devfuuu@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d

Messing with the aliens base is bound to not be good for us.

billionsandbillions@piefed.social · 38 pts · 3d (1 reply)

2024: The hottest year on record.

2025: The hottest year on record.

2026: The hottest year on record.

2027: The hottest year on record.

2028: The hottest year on record.

2029: The hottest year on record.

2030: The hottest year on record.

2031: The hottest year on record.

...

Strider@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 2d

Killing spree!

Rampage!

Dominating!

Unstoppable!

Godlike!

cybermass@lemmy.ca · 34 pts · 3d

With the super el niño I think this year is supposed to be the warmest on record (so far) so unfortunately I would not be surprised if the lack of sea ice is more concentrated in the northern hemisphere.

BartyDeCanter@piefed.social · 25 pts · 3d (1 reply)

I’ve been following sea ice extent for a long time and the number one thing I’ve learned is to not get caught up by any given blip. Sea ice is a complex, slow moving system, so any wobble on the line in a given year is basically meaningless. Look at the year to year and decade to decade trends.

Canigou@jlai.lu · 7 pts · 3d

Like you, I've been looking at those graphs almost daily since 2023, but this dip caught my eye.

silver_wings_of_morning@feddit.dk · 18 pts · 3d

We are Big F in the uck department

chuckleslord@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 3d (6 replies)

As someone who doesn't have a background in climate science, I think it's a really bad idea to look at this and start panicking without context. Just saying

Canigou@jlai.lu · 7 pts · 3d

Sure, there is more than plenty other reasons to panic 😁
Like some projections of a Blue Ocean Event for 2027...
Or the recent observation of the acceleration of global warning 🥳
But besides panicking, I think a lot of people are really not worried enough...

Fluke@feddit.uk · 6 pts · 3d (1 reply)

Man, you're gonna look daft in a few weeks when the ice shelf falls off and the wave drowns half the coastal population centres...

Upgrayedd1776@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 3d

i got my maga branded panic food cart to hide in, im all good thank you

pageflight@piefed.social · 3 pts · 3d

Hopefully. But there are parts of the climate that are delicately balanced and may suddenly cut loose, like potential Gulf stream collapse.

billionsandbillions@piefed.social · 3 pts · 3d (1 reply)

https://www.climate.gov/climatedashboard

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5190/

chuckleslord@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d

Yes. Climate change is real. Not, uh, not what I'm saying, but thanks for clarifying.

TheKaul@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 10 pts · 3d (1 reply)

Since the powers that be are making no steps to slow this down... we need somebody to invent a Mega Space Air Conditioner that blow exhausts hot air directly into space.

BenLeMan@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 2d

That sounds like the kind of idea Elon would have at 3 am while zoinked out of his gourd.

Thorry@feddit.org · 9 pts · 3d (5 replies)

Looks like a pretty significant dip yeah. No idea if it's just an unseasonably warm bit that evens out, or if the ice started retreating really early this year. Normally the peak is in September, not August.

frongt@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 3d (3 replies)

There are ups and downs all over the chart. This is well within normal range from what you can see here. OP should never put any money into the stock market on their own.

queermunist@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 3d (2 replies)

Eyeballing it, it looks sharper than anything else before melt season.

But eyeballing charts is also not a good investment strategy.

frongt@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 3d (1 reply)

Eyeballing it, I see similar shapes to the left of the indicated point, in the line at peak of the chart, and in the line at the bottom of the peak.

Climate change is a huge problem, but this tiny section isn't indicative of anything. You can find animations of this chart showing new lines peaking lower almost every year, and that's horrifying.

queermunist@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 3d

I don't see it. I see faster melts during melt season, so from the peak to the valley, but comparing this time of year to melt season isn't really a good investment strategy either.

Shotgun_Alice@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3d

Yeah, I was wondering the same if the peak just happened earlier then what should be normal.

Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 3d

Super El Niño is really messing everything up.

im_fine_sandy@nord.pub · 8 pts · 3d

Firstly, of course we need to be taking immediate action on climate change.

Secondly, i m aware of the trajectory in that sea ice is reducing each year.

That said, my guess is that this is a blip. Ok it might be a sudden tipping point but I think it's more likely that it's a problem with the data.

AeonWorm@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 3d (1 reply)

SCAR (Scientific Conference of Antarctic Research) 2026 is wrapping up currently. If interested in Antarctic data, I recommend looking at the information coming out of and presented there

Canigou@jlai.lu · 2 pts · 3d

Thank you. I will check that out !

frongt@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 3d

I mean there's always something happening, so yes.

BigTurkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 3d

I swear to Gawd, this better not fuck up my unlimited pasta pass at Olive Garden that starts in 2 weeks.

gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 3d (3 replies)

Go read Ministry for the Future 🫠

Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 3d (1 reply)

Don't know why you're being down voted. It predicts a much more drastic heat dome event compared to what Europe just experienced this year. It even discusses the way the polar ice sheets melting can accelerate if enough water starts accumulating underneath it. It also emphasizes international cooperation to have a chance at curbing the worst of the damage global warming will do.

gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 3d

I’m being downvoted because I pissed off some tankies a while back, so now I usually get a small handful of downvotes on most comments I make, regardless of the topic or relevance (or total lack thereof) to any political stuff. It just makes me laugh tbh, because karma is not a thing on lemmy :P

Canigou@jlai.lu · 1 pts · 3d

Thank you for the reading advice.

Ice@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 3d (3 replies)

A blip, just like other temporary abberations in other years.

partofthevoice@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 3d (1 reply)

You’re now the second or third comment I’ve read to mention this. Has anyone actually pointed these blips out though? I’d like to see them.

Ice@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 2d

There are examples even in this graphic but slightly difficult to see due to how it's designed. Due left from the highlighted point you have one such reversal (albeit slightly smaller than this one).

partofthevoice@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 2d

Mostly for shits and giggles, I told an LLM to find and look into the data.

There is already one strong confirmation: climate scientist Zachary Labe has put up a temporary graphic specifically “to monitor the ongoing record low Antarctic sea ice extent,” updated August 14, 2026. So what you’re seeing is real enough to have caught specialist attention, not merely a Climate Reanalyzer rendering quirk.

I pulled the underlying NSIDC Sea Ice Index v4 daily file rather than relying only on the plotted line. The reversal is substantial: extent rose to about 16.369 million km² on August 4, then fell to 15.955 million km² by August 11—a loss of roughly 414,000 km² in seven days—before ticking back up on August 12–13.

I’m checking the full 1979–2026 record now to see how unusual a week-long decline of that size is at this point in the Antarctic winter, rather than just calling it unusual by eyeballing the graph.

I pulled the underlying NSIDC Sea Ice Index v4 daily data that Climate Reanalyzer uses. Climate Reanalyzer itself plots a 5-day mean, which is important because it means the sharp-looking downturn isn't just one bad satellite day.

I ran the same calculation over the historical NSIDC daily record, using 1988 onward for a clean daily-sampling comparison. The largest previous early-August drawdown in the 5-day-smoothed series was only about 50,000 km². The 2026 decline is therefore roughly six times larger than the next-largest comparable early-August reversal I find.

That last point is particularly interesting because the month didn't begin this way. On August 2, the UK Met Office reported Antarctic extent at 16.65 million km², only the 4th-lowest for the date. July had actually been gaining ice at 76,000 km²/day, slightly faster than the climatological 72,000 km²/day. So this is not simply "2026 has been steadily failing to freeze." There really was an abrupt change in trajectory during the first half of August.

naught101@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d

That's sea ice extent, not measuring the ice sheet (which is the permanent glacier on land).

Also it's well within the historical variability, so probably not a huge flag right now.. Might be worth checking over the next few weeks though. Antarctic sea ice did fall off a cliff over the last decade.. There's also an El Niño building, which is connected to warming I'm the Amundsen Sea, though I don't know how the timing works there.

humanspiral@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 3d

This measures sea ice around antarctica. It is winter there, and it is very unusual to have a period of over 0C at the time of year (happening right now), but it has a thinner outter perimeter that is vulnerable to breaking away and floating off to warmer water.

There is no relevance to ice sheet stability at this time of year, which is at its strongest.

peopleproblems@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d (6 replies)

No. This is a sharper momentary dip. Sort of expected with climate change.

If you look at the summer months for 2025, (January and February for the southern hemisphere) you can see ice sheet area declined far more rapidly rapidly than 2026 did.

Rates of change, particularly ones that are of more recent data, can be very misleading. Now if the same rate of change continued through the end of August, then it would definitely be anomalous.

Climate change does not make immediate impacts like this. Climate change makes the trend of the WHOLE line lower, and more volatile. Notice that 2025 and 2026 lines are at the lower end of the graph.

One (ugly) way to understand this chart better would be the area under the curve for a given year. As 2026 isnt over yet, you cant do this reliably beyond the most recent data point.

The "big" thing then would be if the result for each year was successively lower.

humanspiral@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 3d (3 replies)

The “big” thing then would be if the result for each year was successively lower.

graph is from https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph

that grey area shows 10%-90% range. The big thing is that since 2022, ice extents have deviated strongly from that ultra narrow band. Previously year to year and successive moves, were fairly random above/below that range.

peopleproblems@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 3d (2 replies)

Yep. I didn't mean to imply something wasn't happening, but that something isn't what OP pointed at, and that something is evidence of climate change.

People need to learn that its a slow decline. It's disastrous, but it looks like worsening wildfires each year. More tornados in Iowa and Minnesota. Lower crop yields. Beaches getting smaller by inches, ocean front property values declining and insurance rates increasing. More intense variations in weather and more difficultly forecasting.

Canigou@jlai.lu · 2 pts · 3d (1 reply)

But there are also discussions and predictions about numerous potential tipping points and positive feedback loops.

peopleproblems@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d

Even those don't mean it's straight for rock bottom.

A tipping point means a point of no return. It will never improve beyond that point. Extent of ice won't show you that. Otherwise when the extent is at its lowest in March, it would never come back.

Canigou@jlai.lu · 1 pts · 3d (1 reply)

I know all that, but we also had two years well above the other ones regarding sea surface temperature : 2023 and 2024. Now we seem to be heading for the strongest El Nino ever recorded, even by a wide margin. So I'm now expecting the unexpected. Let's hope you're right.

peopleproblems@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d

There's nothing unexpected here so far. You're causing yourself unnecessary anxiety 🙃.

With trend data or data over time, if you look at a small period of time, the only knowledge you get is limited to that period of time.

If we look at that small period of time where it behaves differently, we can say an event, independent of other events, caused the change. If we look at historical data, we can likely see that similar events caused similar changes. If we then take the data of the event itself, say the average temperature of the El Niño, and compare it to historical El Niños, we will likely see it is a worse El Niño, and maybe see that they have been worsening over time as well. That becomes evidence of climate change too.

StillAlive@piefed.world · 1 pts · 3d (1 reply)

BOE in 2027?

Canigou@jlai.lu · 2 pts · 3d

I've found a projection for this date... This is not the original source but looks pretty thorough : https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2026/06/double-blue-ocean-event-2026-2027-update.html

ivanafterall@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 3d

It's melting.