The area covered by sea ice in Antarctica fell to its lowest level in 2022, according to scientists who have been recording data from the region as early as 1970.

The recordset this year is the second sharp drop in ice coverage in just five years, Chinese researchers from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and the Laboratory of Southern Marine Science in Zhuhai report in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

They have been investigating ocean currents and weather phenomena behind the melting, but are still faced with mysteries, as per a report published by the Oman News Agency.

While ice in the Arctic is rapidly decreasing due to global warming, the ice surface in the Antarctic, on the other hand, has tended to increase slightly, by about 1 per cent every decade since the 1970s.

After an unusual decline recorded in 2017, it happened again this year at the end of the summer in the southern hemisphere at the end of February 2022. For the first time, the extent of Antarctic ice actually fell to less than 2 million square km. The extent was about 30 per cent less than the average for the years 1981 to 2010.

The climate change service of the EU Copernicus programme had also already reported that the daily measured extent of Antarctic sea ice this February had reached its lowest level since records began in 1979.