Go to the interactive sea ice tool at

https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

click on the “Antarctic” button and compare the sea ice coverage for the all time low winter sea ice record (2022), the dotted red line, and the current year (2023). the solid blue line. The grey line is the mean of all the years in the satellite record. The colored buttons allow you to look at each individual year you like.

Something happened last year, there was a precipitous drop in sea ice extent from, 17.4 to 16.7 million km^2 on 9 Aug. This year, on the same date, the SIE dropped to 15 million km^2, a 10% drop in ONE YEAR.

I wonder what the difference will be in mid-September when S hemisphere winter maximum is due. At the Arctic, the summer minimum in the Arctic has been dropping at about 13% per DECADE! For the winter maximum in the Southern Ocean to drop 10% in ONE YEAR is terrifying. All we can hope for is that this decline is an outlier, a fluke, and not representative of a general trend.

Clearly, the warming trend we have noted in the Arctic Basin now seems to have moved to the Antarctic as well. With a vengeance.