PARIS – The area covered by Arctic sea ice reached its lowest point this week since the start of satellite observation in 1972, German researchers announced on Saturday.
"On 8 September, the extent of the Arctic sea ice was 4.24 million sq km. This is a new historic minimum," said Georg Heygster, head of the Physical Analysis of Remote Sensing Images unit at the University of Bremen's Institute of Environmental Physics.
The new mark is about half of a percent below his team's measurements of the previous record on 16 September 2007, he said.
According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), though, the record set on that date was 4.1 million sq km. The discrepancy, Heygster explained by phone, was due to slightly different data sets and algorithms.
"But the results are internally consistent in both cases," he said, adding that he expected the NSIDC to come to the same conclusion in the coming days.
