2010 Arctic Sea Ice Third Lowest On Record

America's National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) have updated their Arctic findings for 2010, and it's not pretty reading.

Usually, September is the time of the year which shows the smallest amount of sea ice in the Arctic, and so it proved again this year.

Unfortunately, it was also the third lowest in the satellite era. The ice extended 4.9 million kilometres, which was 2.14 million kilometres below the 1979-2000 average.

If that's hard to picture, the video below shows the ice extent since 1979 overlaid on Google Earth, or if you have Google Earth installed on your computer then you can download the file here.