Yet again, the area surrounding the Antarctic has surprised scientists. The region has been covered with record breaking ice. The NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center) stated that the sea ice around the continent reached its peak on September 22.

Currently, it covers a total area comprising 7.76 million square miles, which is 595,000 square miles up the 1981 to 2010 average extent. Experts said they are not very clear on what has led to this rise. Every year, the volume of sea ice around the coast of Antarctica has witnessed an improvement.

As per a report by the NASA Goddard, the five-day average of Antarctic sea ice on September 19, 2014, increased 20 million square kilometers for the first time since 1979. But on the whole, loss of ice is taking place at the global level.

Claire Parkinson, a senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, was of the view, "Sea ice as a whole is decreasing as expected, but just like with global warming, not every location with sea ice will have a downward trend in ice extent".

On the other hand, NASA shared that since the late 1970s, the Arctic has lost around 20,800 square miles every year and the Antarctic has increased an average of 7,300 square miles. The rate of ice loss in the Arctic is 300% that of the rate of ice gain in the Arctic.

It's been many years now that weather scientists are quite puzzled about the behaviour of the Southern Ice. The models used as a base indicate the steady growth should not be taking place in a warming world. Researchers said that after seeing such trends, it seems that they have much more to learn.