The amount of Antarctic sea ice is at record levels this year, but scientists insists that doesn't disprove global warming.
Satellite images show that almost 12.5 million square miles of sea ice surrounds the continent. That's the largest amount since records have been kept in the early 1970s.
"That is roughly double the size of the Antarctic continent and about three times the size of Australia," Jan Lieser of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre told ABC. The discovery was made late last week.
Though scientists expected Antarctic sea ice to shrink under global climate change, they now say that unexpected phenomenon in certain areas do not disprove the theory.
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They say the sea ice is actually growing around Antarctica because stronger winds, caused by global warming, are facilitating the process by which sea ice is made.
The ice is made in "sea ice factories" called polynias.
"As soon as sea ice is produced in these polynias it is actually transported away from that so more sea ice can be produced," Lieser told ABC.
The process does not happen as easily in the Arctic because the ice becomes hemmed in by Russia, Greenland, Canada and Alaska, Thorsten Markus of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center recently told
the Los Angeles Times.
And while sea ice is increasing around the South Pole, ice over land on the continent of Antarctica is actually decreasing.
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