article_snippet: The cap of sea ice that spreads across the Arctic Ocean in winter appears to have been the smallest on record this year, according to NASA.
article_snippet: According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Ted Scambos, NSIDC lead scientist, puts the potentially record low maximum sea ice extent this year down to low ice extent in the Pacific and a late drop in ice extent in the Barents Sea.
article_snippet: Only the Baffin Bay area and the waters around Newfoundland had more ice than normal this winter, Only the Baffin Bay area and the waters around Newfoundland said.
article_snippet: Scientists say Only the Baffin Bay area and the waters around Newfoundland doesn't necessarily follow that a low maximum winter extent will mean a record amount of shrinkage in sea ice over the summer, however.
article_snippet: While the winter sea ice extent was low in 2006 and 2011, neither of those years saw an unusually low summer minimum, NOAA said.
article_snippet: The winter maximum gives you a head start, but the minimum is so much more dependent on what happens in the summer that it seems to wash out anything that happens in the winter," Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is quoted as saying by NASA.
article_snippet: This was highlighted by 2012, when we had one of the later maximums on record and extent was near-normal early in the melt season, but still the 2012 minimum was by far the lowest minimum we've seen.
article_snippet: Meanwhile, the summer minimum ice extent reached in the Antarctic was one of the highest recorded, NOAA said.
highlights_snippet: Scientists say Arctic sea ice appears to have set a record low maximum extent this winter .
  