Normally, NASA looks deep into space.

But the space agency also closely observes the events on Earth.
Now the scientists have made a disturbing discovery to the agency.

The NASA-funded National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has been recording by satellite over the
past 39 years how the changing seasons affect the climate in the Arctic. A recent data collection has now
shown that the ice surface at the North Pole in the current winter, the record low from the previous
year only slightly bypasses.

The so-called "sea ice maximum" amounted on March 17, 2018 an area of 14.48 million square
kilometers, which is 59,500 square kilometers more than in the winter of 2017. The ice surface in the
Arctic is thus grown slightly more than the size of Croatia. In the period from February to April, there is
the largest annual spread of ice in the Arctic.

For the past three years, the record has always been negative. Now there is a trend reversal for the first
time. Nevertheless, these new numbers promise nothing positive. The long-term trend, which the US
scientists calculate, assumes that the Arctic ice will continue to shrink in the coming winters.

"The Arctic ice surface is still in a downtrend and this has to do with the ongoing warming of the Arctic,"
says Claire Parkinson, a climatologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. NASA intends to activate a
satellite later this year, which will measure the ice surface in the Arctic not just once a year, but
continuously.