The ice caps on our planet's North and South Poles are always there, though they swell and subside with the seasons.
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Arctic sea ice just hit a new record low in the North Pole
The missing ice would be enough to cover 17 US states (and Washington D.C.). It's part of a dangerous trend toward an ice-free Arctic summer.
Arctic sea ice extent for March 7, 2017 was 14.42 million square kilometers (5.57 million square miles). The orange line shows the 1981 to 2010 median extent for that day.
That has been a fact of life on Earth since a time before humans stood on two legs. It's one of the first things you'd notice if you observed our planet from space.
But at least one of our persistent frozen poles is likely to disappear within the lifetimes of most people alive today. The first ice-free Arctic summer isn't far away.
The northern ice cap took another big step in that direction this winter. For the third cold season in a row, the Arctic ice maximum
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