Antarctic sea ice used to be one of the few things we thought we understood. It followed a seasonal rhythm: retreating each February, peaking by September after enduring a lengthy, frigid winter. Even as the Arctic spiraled into meltdown, the South held its line. In fact, from 2013 to 2015, Antarctic sea ice reached near-record highs. Climate deniers called it proof that the planet wasn’t warming.

There’s a kind of silence only the Southern Ocean knows. Not peace — but pressure. A pressure that builds over centuries, held back by the cold, by the wind, by the infinity of white.

In 2023, the silence cracked.

The Antarctic infinity, for once, seemed to find a breaking point.

After bottoming out at a record-low summer extent in February — a 10% drop from an already unprecedented 2022 — Antarctic sea ice kept falling for six straight months. By July, when it should’ve been near its winter maximum, 15% of the ice was missing — an area larger than my country, Argentina, the world’s eighth largest. And when the September maximum finally arrived, the ice cover had hit its lowest point ever recorded, beating the previous record by more than double.