CURRENT AFFAIRS

Detailed explanation-1: -World of Change: Antarctic Sea Ice. Unlike the Arctic-an ocean basin surrounded by land-the Antarctic is a large continent surrounded by an ocean. Because of this geography, sea ice has more room to expand in the winter.

Detailed explanation-2: -In total, sea ice covers about 25 million square kilometers (9.7 million square miles) of Earth, or about two-and-a-half times the area of Canada. This equates to roughly 15 percent of the world’s oceans being covered by sea ice during at least part of the year.

Detailed explanation-3: -Summer ice cover in the Arctic is about 50% of winter cover.

Detailed explanation-4: -The September 2022 ice extent was 4.87 million square kilometers (1.88 million square miles), tied with 2010 for eleventh lowest in the satellite record. That’s 1.54 million square kilometers (595, 000 square miles) smaller than the 1981-2010 average-an area larger than Alaska.

Detailed explanation-5: -Sea ice covers about 7% of the ocean at any time, and makes up about 66% of the Earth’s permanent ice cover by area, but only 0.1% of the ice in terms of volume. This is because sea ice is a vast but thin sheet of cover compared to the glacial ice caps that are more localized but may be several kilometers thick.