At its most expansive, Antarctic sea ice covers an area the size of Antarctica itself, doubling the size of the frozen continent. But the winter sea ice has been shrinking, and this year there was less ice than ever before, going back to when satellites started tracking annual ice extent around 1980. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
A trio of new scientific analyses about the loss of ice in Antarctica paint a picture of a continent in trouble. Sea ice is disappearing, gigantic portions of the West Antarctic ice sheet are crumbling and even relatively stable East Antarctica is showing worrying changes.
That's a problem for humanity.
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