A report post­ed by the Nation­al Snow & Ice Data Cen­ter (NSIDC) on Octo­ber 7 stat­ed: “Sea ice in Antarc­ti­ca has remained at satel­lite-era record high dai­ly lev­els for most of 2014.”

The report not­ed that dur­ing the peri­od between Sep­tem­ber 10 and Sep­tem­ber 22 very rapid late-sea­son ice growth in Antarc­ti­ca pushed the total sea ice extent upward by near­ly 23,000 square miles per day. This was the first time since 1979 that Antarc­tic sea ice extent exceed­ed 20 mil­lion square kilo­me­ters (7.7 mil­lion square miles) since 1979.

As to what this means, Ted Scam­bos, lead sci­en­tist at the NSIDC stat­ed: “What we’re learn­ing is, we have more to learn.”