Arctic sea ice has fallen to exceptionally diminished levels this year, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Southampton. The research, based on satellite observations, found that a two-decade slowdown in sea ice decline has officially ended.
Winter sea ice levels plummeted in both 2025 and 2026, the study found, suggesting the 20-year trend has returned to a state of significant decline. Dr Duo Chan, lead author of the study, said the sharp drop changes the way scientists interpret recent Arctic winter sea ice change.
What looked like a pause in the early 2020s now appears to have been a temporary slowdown within a longer-term decline associated with global warming, Chan said.
Scientists have warned that the loss of Arctic sea ice carries serious repercussions, including global sea level rise, more extreme winters, and decreased survivability for Arctic wildlife such as polar bears.
Record wintertime drop
The analysis found that Arctic sea ice extent during the winter peak phase, from February to March, fell by 5.8 per cent between 2024 and 2025. That was the largest year-to-year wintertime drop in the satellite record, which began in 1978.
In 2026, sea ice recovered slightly but remained the second lowest extent ever recorded. Chan said short-term recoveries can temporarily obscure the longer-term direction of Arctic sea ice change, and that the low winter extents in 2025 and 2026 clearly show Arctic sea ice loss has not stopped, but is continuing in a warming climate.
Wider climate impact
WWF has previously warned the ice loss will have repercussions for nearly everyone on Earth. Because Arctic ice reflects heat back into space, its loss could spark more intense heatwaves worldwide as well as more extreme winters.
WWF explained that as the polar jet stream, a high-pressure wind that circles the Arctic region, is destabilized by warmer air, it can dip south and bring bitter cold with it. Sea ice loss can also spark global sea level rise, food instability, and more dangerous shipping routes.
Threat to Arctic wildlife
WWF said that when there is less sea ice, animals that depend on it for survival must adapt or perish. Loss of ice and melting permafrost spells trouble for polar bears, walruses, arctic foxes, snowy owls, reindeer, and many other species, the group said, adding that other species that depend on them are affected too, along with people.
WWF said wildlife and people are coming into more frequent contact, and often conflict, as wildlife encroach on Arctic communities looking for refuge as their sea ice habitat disappears.
Polar bears need platforms of ice to reach their prey of ringed and bearded seals, with some sea ice lying over more productive hunting areas than others. University of Alaska at Fairbanks scientist John Walsh said the Arctic has been warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, and in some seasons three times faster.
In summer, polar bears go out on the ice to hunt and feast, putting on weight to sustain them through winter, preferring areas more than half covered with ice. From late fall until spring, mothers with new cubs den in snowdrifts on land or on pack ice, emerging in spring to hunt seals from floating sea ice.
In recent years the sea ice has retreated so far offshore that bears have been forced to drift on the ice into deep waters, sometimes nearly a mile deep, that are devoid of their prey.
