Here's a graph that shows the seasonal change in Antarctic sea ice coverage since 1978, The line in red is for 2023. You can see that it's far below the other years. (Source: VISHOP).
To get a feel for how out of the ordinary this is, a retired professor of mathematics and computer science named Eliot Jacobson charted the daily standard deviations for sea ice extent. Most of the years are within 2-3 standard deviations, but 2023 started dropping like crazy in the spring, and is currents around 6.5 standard deviations.
Assuming a Gaussian distribution, a six-sigma event could be expected about once every 506 million days, or once every 1.38 million years. I hope I don't know what I'm talking about because if this is right, it seems like we are heading for catastrophe.
Meanwhile, seawater temperatures off the coast of Florida have hit 101 degrees, "the hottest sea surface temperature ever recorded on Earth."
