The social media post claimed to refute the impact of Antarctica's climate change by comparing the coverage of a day in 2024 with the coverage recorded in the same period in 1979. But scientists say these statistics are cherry-picked; they do not refute the effects of human-induced warming on good, continental, and widespread influences. Ocean and sea ice pattern.
A post published on the online thread on May 6, 2025 said: “We are also constantly being lying (sic).
The post shared an image, juxtaposed two charts, measuring the sea ice range. One is from December 24, 1979, and the other is from December 24, 2024.
The text under the chart reads: “Antarctic sea ice range is 17% higher today than in 1979.”
Similar claims have emerged on other platforms, including Instagram and X.
Narratives that attempt to deny the impact of climate change on the Arctic and Antarctic (the polar regions around the Arctic and Antarctic) often rely on sea ice data to make misleading claims.
In this case, the charts shared online are from the National Bingbing Data Center (NSIDC). AFP retrieves the exact match from the NSIDC online archive (here and here) from the NSIDC online archive.
NSIDC senior research scientist Walt Meier said their side-by-side comparisons equal “a classic case of cherry picking.”
“Looking at two-year single day does not provide useful information about trends or sea ice's response to warming,” Mel said.
Cherry Picking Data
NSIDC said on its website that sea ice data has been repeatedly abused to spread myths about global warming (archived here). Typically, scientists look at the decade-long trend of “sea ice range,” a term that refers to the total ocean area, at least 15% of the surface being frozen.
National Ice and Snow Data Center
National Ice and Snow Data Center
National Ice and Snow Data Center
National Ice and Snow Data Center
The agency said the measurements conducted on December 24, 1979 and December 24, 2024 did show a difference in sea ice coverage, but increased by about 12%, rather than 17%.
Comparing most other dates will leave a different impression.
“From January 1 to December 13, the range in 2024 is below the 1979 level, sometimes exceeding 1 million square kilometers,” Mel said.
“The range in 2024 is higher than in 1979 during December 14-31 alone,” he added.
The summer in Antarctica (from December to February) naturally shows a larger sea ice transition as temperatures rise and sunlight lasts longer.
Meier explained that this means that the timing of ice retreat has changed slightly – when the exact melting season begins – the range of December relative to another December relative to another December can be changed rapidly and greatly.
According to NSIDC data, throughout 2024, warming was observed, with the sea ice range below the 1979 average of about 11%.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Antarctic sea ice range has reached its second-lowest annual minimum in 2024 since monitoring began in 1979, and 2025 may win such a record (archived here and here).
Potential “government transfer”
A sharp climate change has already occurred on the Antarctic Peninsula, part of the Antarctic farthest Antarctic. The peninsula warms five times faster than the global average and is faster than anywhere else in the southern hemisphere (archived here).
However, the pattern of temperature changes throughout the continent remains uncertain, scientists say.
Unlike the Arctic, sea ice range has been gradually decreasing in all regions and seasons since the beginning of the record, with Antarctica lacking a long-term clear decline in sea ice (archived here).
“The Antarctic sea ice is thin and open to the ocean, so it has greater variability, so global warming signals are not that obvious,” Mel said.
The past decade has shown more extreme volatility, and scientists say it could indicate a “government transition” to a new low-expanding state, which could be due to the warmer ocean (archived here and here).
Both polar oceans are warming, and the Southern Ocean is “disproportionate and increasingly important in global ocean heat increase,” according to the leading International Climate Scientists.
Samantha Burgess of the European Center for Medium Weather Forecasting added in a February 2025 report: “One of the consequences of a warming world is melting sea ice, recordings at the poles or near-record low sea ice cover push the global sea ice sheet to a global minimum.”
When highly reflective snow and ice give way to deep blue oceans, the solar radiation that once bounced back into space was absorbed by water, accelerating the rate of global warming in the feedback loop.
Reduced ice sheets also have serious and rapid effects on ecosystems (such as penguins and their habitats) (archived here).
AFP also debunked other claims about the impact of global warming on Poles, including here.
