Antarctic Sea Ice Allegedly Started Melting Over 70 Years Ago

Reports of human-induced climate change has been alarming scientists in recent decades. However, it seems that sea ice on the south pole has behaved opposite to that of the Arctic -- a phenomenon that has since baffled scientists. Two new studies, however, showed that the Antarctic sea ice is actually more complicated.

A study published in the Cryosphere journal looked through the logbooks of early explorers and compared them with recorded observations of Antarctic ice from the time (1897-1917) to that of the satellite images today.

With the help of climate scientists from the University of Reading, United Kingdom, the study found that estimates of the extent of summer sea ice now is at most 14 percent less than it was 100 years ago. Jonathan Day, lead author of the study, noted that sea ice in the Antaractic has been known to increase slightly over the past 30 years.

However, scientists are still grappling to understand the trend with global warming in context. "If ice levels were as low a century ago as estimated in this research, then a similar increase may have occurred between then and the middle of the century, when previous studies suggest ice levels were far higher."

A second study from the journal Nature explained that the thinning of the Pine Island Glacier in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been underway for the past 70 years. These melting glaciers and others near these have been known as the biggest contributors to rising sea levels in recent times.

Mail Online noted that some scientists also believed that the widening hole of our atmosphere's ozone layer may have also caused stronger surface winds over Antarctica, implying that sea ice levels at this point were similar to those of the 1900s, while estimates show that levels have been significantly higher in the 1950s.