After growing through the cold months of fall and winter, the Arctic's vast lid of floating sea ice is now entering the warm season — in poor health.
The sea ice appears to have reached its annual maximum extent on Feb. 25, 2022, with the ice covering 5.75 million square miles. That's the tenth lowest extent in the 44-year satellite record, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
If tenth lowest doesn't seem very significant, consider that this year's maximum extent was 297,000 square miles below the long-term average — an area larger than the state of Texas.
