Seven years before wildfires tore through opposite ends of the Los Angeles area, the Tubbs Fire in Northern California’s Sonoma County jumped a six-lane freeway and decimated Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park subdivision, a suburban enclave similar to Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

The fire destroyed about 5,000 homes in Santa Rosa and the surrounding area in October 2017, with about 1,500 of those in Coffey Park, making it California’s costliest wildfire disaster at the time. Within three years, 80% of Coffey Park’s destroyed homes were fully rebuilt and occupied, according to local officials.

The journey was long, uncertain and filled with detours, according to interviews with Coffey Park residents who rebuilt and local government officials. Debris removal was a lengthy, cumbersome process; there was contractor fraud, leading to criminal convictions; the minutiae of government approvals at every step caused frustration.

But the experiences of those who rebuilt in Coffey Park and Santa Rosa also showed the power of collective action by residents, and local government success streamlining construction, which offer a template for the Los Angeles-area communities of Pacific Palisades and Altadena, where more than 16,000 homes and other structures were destroyed by this month’s fires that also killed 28 people.

“Band together and have a group that you go through it with,” said Jeff Okrepkie, who started a nonprofit rebuilding group for Coffey Park, finished his rebuild in early 2020 and later became a Santa Rosa city council member. “It’s always easier to get your questions answered when you’re asking for 100 people, or 500 people.”

‘Not much you can do’

David Kovalevski wants to rebuild his century-old Altadena craftsman house that burned in the Eaton Fire northeast of Los Angeles, but the task looks daunting. “When can we even start?” he said. “It looks like a war zone.”

He is trying to understand what insurance will pay, and how that will compare to new, higher prices as thousands of homeowners in his area try to rebuild at the same time. “How will they even manage in a reasonable timeframe to rebuild so many houses at the same time?” Damian Clopton had many of the same questions in the weeks after he fled his burning Coffey Park home in October 2017 with his wife, Ashley Osbun, four cats and a laptop.

He remembered the “shell shock,” waking up each morning in an unfamiliar house, only to realize a few seconds later his predicament. “Everything just sucks in the beginning,” Clopton said. “You really want to move on and there’s not much you can do.”

That was because, like in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, residents were largely kept out as emergency crews sent cadaver dogs to search for missing people and Hazmat crews removed toxic waste.

Then came debris removal, which started about a month after the fire and took two-and-a-half months to complete. In Sonoma County in 2017, residents could choose a FEMA-contracted debris removal program or hire a private contractor, which was more expensive and required certifications for disposing of hazardous material.

“People think they’re just going to be able to get a dump truck and a backhoe, build their house and move on,” said Steve Rahmn, a Coffey Park resident who completed his rebuild in 2020. “Government’s got its due process.”

The Santa Rosa FEMA program offered the easiest path but suffered from bureaucratic bungles, such as FEMA’s policy of paying contractors based on the weight of debris they carried off site. Crews eager for maximum weight left sunken lots, and the state ultimately had to create a new program to replace homeowners’ missing dirt.

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Office of Emergency Services this month announced similar debris removal options for private properties in the wake of the Palisades and Eaton fires. First, Environmental Protection Agency crews must remove hazardous waste, including electric-vehicle batteries, which began earlier this month. Los Angeles County Public Works Director Mark Pestrella has said debris removal could take six months to a year.

U.S. Congressman Mike Thompson, whose district includes Santa Rosa, said he has developed what he calls a “disaster booklet” to impart lessons to representatives from areas affected by wildfires. “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel,” he said, citing pre-approval of building plans as a model for faster reconstruction.

After crews finished debris removal in Santa Rosa, the neighborhood was a blank canvas, meaning residents had to get property lines surveyed again. Potentially every homeowner had to hire a surveyor in order to start drawing up plans for new homes.

That’s where the collective action began. Though scattered around the area and the country, residents kept in touch on social media, social meetings like “Wine Wednesdays” and an area newsletter. Many started meeting in the first few weeks at a local junior college and a performing arts center, said Okrepkie, and the numbers built as the weeks went by.

City planning officials attended the meetings and started making policies directly resulting from those discussions, said Gabe Osburn, Santa Rosa’s director of planning and economic development.

After hearing surveying concerns, city officials helped connect residents with local surveyors to speed up the process, Osburn said.

Discussions from those meetings also led to the city creating a “resilient” zone for fire-damaged areas, with reduced planning and design requirements.

“Anything that would be an impediment from a time standpoint, or a cost standpoint, we analyzed,” Osburn said.

In the wake of the Los Angeles-area fires, Newsom suspended certain state environmental reviews in the fire-affected areas, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass signed an order creating a new permitting center to be staffed seven days a week in the fire-affected areas.

In Santa Rosa, local builders also sped up the recovery process by drawing up a handful of home designs that were pre-approved by local officials. This allowed many residents to choose from a menu of options and quickly build a house. Some homeowners, like Carol McHale, were not so lucky. She and her partner lost more than $100,000 of their personal savings after a builder asked for money upfront but never completed their rebuild. He was among several contractors who were convicted of fraud in the years after the fire.

McHale started over with another contractor, having to revisit every excruciating decision: Vinyl or hardwood floors, quartz or granite for kitchen counters, what paint color inside?

“We were making $10,000 decisions every day,” McHale said. “Even years later, it makes my stomach hurt.” But out of that painful experience, she also found hope: She and her partner, Erin Murphy, re-committed to their relationship, and will soon celebrate their 25th anniversary.

“People say ‘I don’t know how you did it,'” she said. “You do one day; you do the next one.”

‘I can control this’

The rebuilding process was often an emotional roller coaster, residents said.

Clopton chose to be his own general contractor, making substantial changes to the original design. He still hasn’t fully finished.

“Yes, they’ve gone out of their way to get rid of regulations, at the same time that they pile on other regulations,” he said. “This is a slog.”

Okrepkie said that after debris removal was complete, heavy rains in early 2018 delayed all construction, just as he was hoping to break ground. Work progressed, though, and by late 2019 the drywall was complete on his new home.

“All of a sudden you’re like, ‘This is the exact dimension of the living room I’m going to watch the Super Bowl in,” he recalled. “You see all the bedrooms upstairs and you say ‘I wonder which one my son is going to want?'”

For him, there was a satisfaction that came with rebuilding in the wake of a fire, a sense that he once again had control.

“I couldn’t control losing my house, or moving away, but I can control this,” he said. “I can control what my countertops look like. I think there’s a healthy aspect to that.”

There was a strange feeling when I walked past the homes taken by the fires at Pasadena and Altadena in Los Angeles. A feeling like I had been there before. But I knew I hadn’t.

What did the brick chimney columns and arches leading to nowhere remind me of? Ruins. That is what it was. Ruins that I’d seen on my travels or in postcards. What was once an era is now a fading silhouette.

In the residential areas of Pasadena and Altadena, where I walked alone, on the deserted streets, the fires had consigned what were people’s homes, as of the previous day, to the forever past. Their little civilisation, which was their world, was done. Such was the cruel arbitrariness of the raging fires that a random home next door or next block could still be standing intact while others return to a charred nothingness, arches and chimney pillars, a fireplace, the shell of a car. There’s no saying what survives. Entire rooms vanished, books, furniture, kitchen cabinets, dishes, clothing, sofas, tables, curtains, walls, roofs, will all be gone without a trace. Maybe, a bathtub would remain.

‘It’s Our Entire Community’

The process of rebuilding lives lost to a fire can take years. With fire insurance becoming scarce or prohibitive over the years, many don’t have the financial cover. Those who can may want to rebuild in the same neighbourhood community they have lived in for years. Yet, for some like Kristin from the Palisades, there is no neighbourhood left at all.

Kristin, who spent the last 15 years raising her children in the Palisades, came home from vacation to learn that her home was gone, and so was the brick-and-mortar existence of her entire community. “I lost all my family albums, the sentimental things,” she says, clutching her chest. “Like the watch my father gave me. I only have the stuff I took with me in my suitcase for a holiday. But it is not just us. It is our entire community. Though I am thankful my family is together,” she says, showing me pictures of levelled land that was once the community church, the grocery store, the school. “I am heartbroken for my community.”

Fire and tragedy bring people closer together. It makes people talk to each other when they might not have earlier. It makes them see each other for who they are and, to a degree, trust each other more. Earlier that morning, with so many road closures, I had no idea how to go about reaching the sites of the fires from my downtown hotel. The hotel doorman suggested a route to my Armenian American taxi driver, who then called his friend in Pasadena to see exactly which roads to take. A police officer on duty believed me when I said I had a story to report and asked another reporter with a personal car to give me a ride.

Living With Uncertainty

The reporter, who didn’t know me at all, willingly drove me and then offered me a mask. Delhi’s winter air was not a patch on these toxic fumes. At times like these, even strangers come together to help each other. It will take that spirit of community, if not its infrastructure, to get through this travail.

I walk past bright white rose bushes blooming on a gleaming white picket fence, still guarding a house that is entirely burnt down. A surreal sight. But the devastation leads me to wonder about the emotional toll this disaster has taken not just on those who have lost their homes, but also on those who are living with uncertainty, knowing that with more winds expected this week, it might be their time to leave.

“I sleep with one eye open,” says Lee Roy Lahey, an artist in LA’s famous animation industry. Lee Roy says that many middle-class workers in animation have been badly affected by the Eaton fire that razed Altadena and Pasadena. While celebrity homes make news, many others in the entertainment industry have been also hit badly.

Residents have been suspended in a state of constant vigilance and intelligence gathering, trying to preserve some semblance of normalcy for their children. “We know that there cannot be any catastrophising in front of the kids. Yet, if we wait too long and something happens, trying to get out will be a really big problem.”

These are the daily negotiations that young families who have not had to leave their homes, face. But there is hope. A community GoFundMe page has friends from the animation industry supporting each other. Storyboard artists, VFX engineers, illustrators, whose names are on the credits of some of my children’s favourite cartoons, have lost their homes entirely and have nothing left to rebuild. Yet, each family appears to have gathered some funds to help them restart their lives. And they are full of humility and gratitude.

Is gratitude a survival mechanism? The cynic in me sometimes wonders. Or is it, in this case, an instant levelling-up of one’s humanity brought forth by life’s great teacher: loss?

(Amrita Gandhi is a television host, writer and producer)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

The largest of the raging wildfires that have devastated parts of Los Angeles this week has, till now, burnt 10,000 structures as neighbourhoods turn to ashes. Thousands of people are homeless; a public health emergency has been declared over smoke all around the area. Insurers are facing billions in claims as many notable rich people, including celebrities like Paris Hilton, have lost their houses to this massive fire.

The fire, the most destructive in the history of Los Angeles, has razed whole neighbourhoods to the ground, leaving just the smouldering ruins of what had been people’s homes and possessions. But surprisingly there are a few houses that remained safe this time when heavy winds were taking the fire to even hills to lands. One of the untouched mansions is of David Steiner, a retired waste-management mogul from Texas.

Also Read | Los Angeles Fire: Tom Hanks’ Mansion Miraculously Survives As Many Celebrity Homes Ravaged

David Steiner’s $9 million Malibu mansion miraculously spared being levelled by the raging Los Angeles wildfires. He told The New York Post on Friday he was stunned to learn that when the smoke cleared, it was still standing.

“It’s a miracle-miracles never cease,” said the 64-year-old trash tycoon.

Also Read | US Lottery Winner Of $2 Billion Loses Entire Los Angeles Mansion In Devastating Wildfires

Steiner said he thought his stunning three-story California structure-which was vacant at the time-was a goner when a local contractor sent him video of flames and smoke engulfing his property and his neighbours’ Tuesday.

Six simultaneous blazes that have ripped across Los Angeles County neighbourhoods since Tuesday have killed at least 11 people and damaged or destroyed 10,000 structures. The toll is expected to mount when firefighters are able to conduct house-to-house searches.

Massive wildfires roaring through the Los Angeles area left neighborhoods in ruins Wednesday (January 8, 2024), killing at least two people and threatening landmarks made famous by Hollywood as desperate residents escaped through flames, hurricane-force winds and towering columns of smoke.

Three major blazes that erupted just a day earlier blanketed the city with a dangerous, thick cloud of smoke and ash and destroyed homes across the metropolitan area, from the Pacific Coast inland to Pasadena, home of the famed Rose Parade. One of the fires was the most destructive in the modern history of the city of LA.

With thousands of firefighters already attacking the flames, the Los Angeles Fire Department put out a plea for off-duty and out-of-state firefighters to help. The strong winds had temporarily stopped aircraft from dumping water from above until they were able to resume flights.

More than 1,000 structures were destroyed and numerous people were hurt in the fires, including first responders, said Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone.

Images of the devastation showed luxurious homes that collapsed in a whirlwind of flaming embers. Amid the debris was a toppled statue and a blackened motorcycle, its tires melted away.

“This morning, we woke up to a dark cloud over all of Los Angeles. But it is darkest for those who are most intimately impacted by these fires. It has been an immensely painful 24 hours,” LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said.

At least 70,000 people were ordered to evacuate — a number that kept changing because evacuation orders were continually being issued, officials said. The flames marched toward highly populated and affluent neighborhoods, including Calabasas and Santa Monica, home to California’s rich and famous. Hollywood stars, including Mark Hamill, Mandy Moore and James Woods, were among those forced to flee.

“We are prioritizing life over everything else,” Sheriff Robert Luna said.

The fires have consumed a total of about 22 square miles (56 square kilometers) — about half the size of the entire city of San Francisco.

Jennie Girardo, a 39-year-old producer and director from Pasadena, said she was alarmed when her neighbor came to check on her.

“When I opened my door, it smelled like I was living inside of a fireplace,” she said. “Then I also started to see the ash. And I’ve never seen that in my life. Like raining ash.”

Flames moved so quickly that many had little time to escape. Police sought shelter inside their patrol cars, and residents at a senior living center were pushed in wheelchairs and hospital beds down a street to safety in the foothills northeast of LA. On Wednesday, many of those residents were at the Pasadena Convention Center, waiting to hear where they would be staying.

One of the fires ripped through the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, a hillside area along the coast dotted with celebrity homes and memorialized by the Beach Boys in their 1960s hit “Surfin’ USA.” In the race to get to safety, roadways became impassable when scores of people abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, some toting suitcases.

“People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags,” said Kelsey Trainor, who escaped while ash fell all around and fires burned on both sides of the road.

California’s wildfire season typically begins in June or July and runs through October, according to the Western Fire Chiefs Association, but January wildfires are not unprecedented. There was one in 2022 and 10 in 2021, according to CalFire.

The season is beginning earlier and ending later due to rising temperatures and decreased rainfall tied to climate change, according to recent data. Rains that usually end fire season are often delayed, meaning fires can burn through the winter months, the association said.

President Joe Biden pledged on Wednesday to sign a federal emergency declaration after arriving at a Santa Monica fire station for a briefing with Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Newsom posted on X that California had deployed more than 1,400 firefighting personnel to combat the blazes. He also dispatched National Guard troops to help. Firefighters from neighboring states also were being asked to assist.

“We are absolutely not out of danger yet,” Los Angeles city Fire Chief Kristin M. Crowley said.

The fires burned through Temescal Canyon, a popular hiking area surrounded by dense neighborhoods of multimillion-dollar homes and also jumped famous Sunset Boulevard, burning parts of the Palisades Charter High School, which has been featured in many Hollywood productions, including the 1976 horror movie “Carrie and the TV series “Teen Wolf.”

As it grew, the fire burning in the Pacific Palisades became the most destructive fire in the modern history of the city of Los Angeles.

With an estimated 1,000 structures destroyed and the flames still growing Wednesday, it is far more destructive than the second-most destructive, according to statistics kept by the Wildfire Alliance, a partnership between the city’s fire department and MySafe:LA. Structures refers to homes and other buildings.

The last most destructive fire was the Sayre fire in November 2008 that destroyed 604 structures in Sylmar, the northernmost suburb in the city. Before that, a 1961 Bel Air fire stood for nearly half a century as the most destructive fire in the city’s history. It burned nearly 500 houses in the tony hillside enclave, including homes of actor Burt Lancaster, Zsa Zsa Gabor and other celebrities.

Residents were urged residents to limit water usage. Los Angeles Public Works Director Mark Pestrella said the city’s water systems that service homes and businesses were working effectively, but “they are not designed to fight wildfires.”

More than 100 schools were closed due to fire risk. Southern California Edison shut off service to thousands because of safety concerns related to high winds and fire risks. More than 500,000 could face shutoffs depending on weather conditions, the utility said.

Recent dry winds, including the notorious Santa Anas, have contributed to warmer-than-average temperatures in Southern California, where there’s been very little rain so far this season. Southern California hasn’t seen more than 0.1 inches (0.25 centimeters) of rain since early May.

The winds increased to 80 mph (129 kph) early Wednesday, according to reports received by the National Weather Service, and could top 100 mph (160 kph) in mountains and foothills.

Longtime Palisades resident Will Adams said embers flew into his wife’s car as she tried to evacuate, so she jumped out and ran toward the ocean to get out of danger.

“It is crazy, it’s everywhere, in all the nooks and crannies of the Palisades. One home’s safe, the other one’s up in flames,” he said.

Paris:

Deforestation continued last year at a rate far beyond pledges to end the practice by 2030, according to a major study published Tuesday.

Forests nearly the size of Ireland were lost in 2023, according to two dozen research organisations, NGOs and advocacy groups, with 6.37 million hectares (15.7 million acres) of trees felled and burned.

This “significantly exceeded” levels that would have kept the world on track to eliminate deforestation by the end of the decade, a commitment made in 2021 by more than 140 leaders.

Forests are home to 80 percent of the world’s terrestrial plant and animal species and crucial for regulating water cycles and sequestering CO2, the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming.

“Globally, deforestation has gotten worse, not better, since the beginning of the decade,” said Ivan Palmegiani, a biodiversity and land use consultant at Climate Focus and lead author of the “Forest Declaration Assessment” report.

“We’re only six years away from a critical global deadline to end deforestation, and forests continue to be chopped down, degraded, and set ablaze at alarming rates.”

In 2023, 3.7 million hectares of tropical primary forest — particularly carbon rich and ecologically biodiverse environments — disappeared, a figure that should have fallen significantly to meet the 2030 objective.

Soya and nickel

In high-risk regions, researchers pointed to backsliding in Bolivia and in Indonesia.~CHECK~

The report said there was an “alarming rise” in deforestation in Bolivia, which jumped 351 percent between 2015 and 2023.

The “trend shows no sign of abating”, it added, with forests largely cleared for agriculture, notably for soya but also beef and sugar.

In Indonesia, deforestation slumped between 2020-2022 but started rising sharply last year.

Ironically, that is partly down to demand for materials often seen as eco-friendly, such as viscose for clothing, and a surge in nickel mining for electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy technologies.

There was better news from Brazil.

While it remains the country with the highest deforestation rates in the world, it has made key progress.

The situation has significantly improved in the Amazon, which has benefited from protective measures put in place by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

However, in the Cerrado, a key tropical savannah below the Amazon, deforestation has increased.

Degraded forests

The report also highlights the role of logging, road building and fires in forest degradation, when land is damaged but not razed entirely.

In 2022, the last year data was available, a forest area twice the size of Germany was degraded.

Erin Matson, senior consultant at Climate Focus, and co-author of the report, said “strong policies and strong enforcement” were needed.

“To meet global forest protection targets, we must make forest protection immune to political and economic whims,” she said.

The report comes in the wake of the European Commission’s proposal last week to postpone by a year (to the end of 2025) the entry into force of its anti-deforestation law, despite protests from NGOs.

“We have to fundamentally rethink our relationship with consumption and our models of production to shift away from a reliance on over exploiting natural resources,” said Matson.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

A delivery cyclist wearing a face mask cycles down a street in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024, on a day with poor air quality.
| Photo Credit: AP

Authorities in Ukraine advised residents in the capital Kyiv to stay indoors Friday (September 20, 2024) as air pollution, partly caused by fires in the region, blanketed the city.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources said the pollution was a result of the burning of peatlands and other wildfires in the region combined with autumn temperature fluctuations.

The capital woke up to thick smog with the rancid smell of blazing fires in the air. Some people were spotted wearing masks.

Also Read: Ukraine war’s environmental toll to take years to clean up

The Ukrainian capital topped a list of the most polluted major cities early Friday (September 20) in a real-time database by IQAir, a Swiss company that monitors air quality levels. Its air quality appeared to have improved somewhat since as the city came down in the ranking later in the day.

Kyiv’s Department of Environmental Protection and Climate Change said that “the likely cause of this is fires in the Kyiv region.”

Fires have been reported in the Vyshhorod district, around 20km (around 12 miles) north of the capital.

Officials warned about an increased concentration of suspended particles, such as dust, soot, and smoke, in the air. In some areas of the city, air pollution levels have reached the maximum of the 100-point scale.

While human-driven climate change does not directly cause fires, it can increase the risk of wildfire as warming temperatures and increasingly dry air, trees and soil can make it easier for fires to spread. Forest fires around the world have worsened in recent years, with almost twice as much tree cover burning in 2023 than 20 years ago, according to the World Resources Institute.

Wildfire smoke can cause air quality to deteriorate even many miles away from fires. The main concern from the wildfire smoke is fine particle pollution, known as PM2.5. Fine particle pollution can cause short-term problems like coughing, as well as long-term impacts on the lungs and heart.

Pollution is a major health concern — with one major study estimating that pollution kills around 9 million people globally a year.

Residents in Kyiv were advised to close their windows, limit time spent outdoors, drink plenty of water, and use an air purifier.

“Particular attention should be paid to these recommendations by people with respiratory and cardiovascular diseases,” said a statement from the Ecology Ministry.

Autumn temperature variations trap harmful substances in the air, worsening pollution and reducing air quality, the ministry added.

FILE PHOTO: Police officers use a hose in effort to extinguish wildfires in Ogan Ilir regency, South Sumatra province, Indonesia, September 20, 2023, in this photo taken by Antara Foto.
| Photo Credit: Antara Foto/Nova Wahyudi

As the world gears up for COP28, there is alarming data on the horizon. The year 2023 is on course to possibly becoming the warmest year in recorded history, with temperatures nearing 1.4°C above the pre-industrial era average.

In September 2023, global temperatures reached a record high. The average surface air temperature was 16.38°C, which is 0.93°C higher than the September average between 1991 and 2020. Moreover, it was 0.5°C warmer than the earlier record set in September 2020.

Chart 1 | The chart shows the globally averaged surface air temperature anomalies relative to 1991–2020 for each September from 1940 to 2023.

Charts appear incomplete? Click to remove AMP mode

The month of September 2023 was approximately 1.75°C above the average temperature of September during the 1850-1900 span, which is considered the pre-industrial benchmark.

From January to September 2023, the global surface air temperature was 0.52°C above the 1991-2020 average and 0.05°C higher than the same period in 2016, the warmest year. During this time frame in 2023, the world’s average temperature was 1.40°C higher than the baseline period of 1850-1900.

According to the Copernicus Climate Bulletin, in September 2023, the majority of Europe experienced temperatures significantly higher than the average from 1991 to 2020. A region stretching from France to Finland and extending to north-western Russia reported its hottest September ever. Notably, both Belgium and the U.K. faced unparalleled heatwave conditions at the start of the month.

Chart 2 | The chart shows the average global surface air temperatures for the 30 warmest months between 1940 and 2023, arranged in ascending order. The temperatures for June, July, August, and September of 2023 are highlighted.

The hottest-ever September of 2023 followed the warmest-ever two months on record — July and August 2023 — when the global mean temperature reached monthly records of 16.95°C and 16.82, respectively. The notable increase in these two months, especially compared to the July 2019 record of 16.63°C, is evident in Chart 2. Moreover, September 2023 is the sole September represented in this chart. The warmest September before 2023 recorded an average surface air temperature 15.88°C, which is not high enough to be included in chart 2.

Chart 3 | The chart shows the global daily surface air temperature (°C) from January 1, 1940 to September 30, 2023, plotted as a time series for each year. The line for 2023 is highlighted.

Other years are marked in grey. The thick black line represents the 1.5°C threshold above pre-industrial levels. For more than 80 days in 2023, the global temperature was at least 1.5° higher than pre-industrial levels. The year 2023 holds the record for the highest number of such days.

In a worrying update, the extent of sea ice has stayed at very low levels for this time of the year in the Antarctic region. Sea ice extent refers to the total area of an ocean where there is at least some sea ice present. Satellite records for September reveal that both daily and monthly extents have plummeted to their lowest annual peaks, with the monthly extent dropping 9% below the norm.

Chart 4 | The chart shows the daily Antarctic sea ice extent from 1979 to September 2023. The year 2023 is highlighted; the median for 1991–2020 is shown as a dotted line.

Meanwhile, the monthly average Arctic sea ice extent in September 2023 reached its annual minimum of 4.8 million km2, about 1.1 million km2 (or 18%) below the 1991-2020 average for September. This value is the fifth lowest in the satellite data record.

Source: European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service

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