Technologies

As a ‘Sea Ice Free’ Arctic Looms, the Climate Consequences Are Mounting

Research points to a milestone in the 2030s, but sea ice is already disappearing at an unprecedented rate. And that affects all of us.

The sound of ice cracking underneath the hull of a 25,500-ton icebreaker is unmistakable. No matter where you are — shuffling along the lunch line in the galley or sitting on the observation deck with a pack of cards — the wincing of steel and crunching of ice can shriek through the ship. It’s almost ghostly; undeniably haunting.

The sight of the ice? That’s mesmerizing. From the deck of Australia’s icebreaker, the RSV Nuyina, on which I sailed to Antarctica for more than five weeks at the start of 2022, it’s like looking out over a Martian landscape that’s been covered in a coat of stark white paint. In the distance, castles of ice rise from the vast, unbroken ice sheet. At the foot of one fortress, a battalion of King penguins lurks, unfazed by the freezing temperatures. Behind the ship, smaller Adelie penguins avoid a scrap with a leopard seal by climbing onto an island of ice and scurrying away.

Sea ice is vital to the Antarctic ecosystem. It’s not just a refuge for penguins and other animals, but a fundamental facet of life for creatures further down the food chain too, like Antarctic krill. It means life. The ice is also critical for heat because it’s more reflective than water, bouncing back more sunlight than the ocean, and it can act as a physical barrier, impacting the exchange of gases between the ocean and the atmosphere and protecting the continent’s ice shelves.

The Antarctic is currently experiencing the lowest level of sea ice since satellites began taking measurements in 1979. It’s an anomaly scientists are concerned about and monitoring closely. It was just a decade ago that sea ice in the Antarctic reached record highs, but generally low extents have been observed since 2016. It’s worrying, and could signal a shift in the sea ice dynamics down south, but the situation is more dire at the opposite end of the planet.

There, at the Earth’s northern extreme, the Arctic is experiencing an increase in temperatures two to four times higher than anywhere else in the world, and sea ice has decreased by about 12% per decade since the beginning of the satellite era. About 548,000 square miles of sea ice has been lost since 1979, equivalent to losing an area of ice roughly half the size of India. It’s seen a more rapid decline since 2000.

It’s one of the most obvious signs that greenhouse gas emissions are shifting the planet’s equilibrium. Researchers say we can take steps to slow the changes, but we need to act with urgency.

The 4 million people who call the Arctic home rely on the Arctic Ocean for food and transportation. The Indigenous peoples of the Arctic, who make up about 10% of the population, have a vibrant and longstanding cultural connection to the region that is slowly dripping away as regions become free of sea ice for the first time in millennia.

Meanwhile, the distribution of wildlife is shifting and behaviors are changing, altering the interactions between predators and prey. The Arctic’s famous polar bears rely on the ice to hunt and now have to travel further to eat, whereas the narwhal, a near-mythic, tusked whale, faces increased threats from killer whales lingering in exposed, warmer waters and disruptions to its migratory patterns.

Our best models currently predict the Arctic will be «sea ice free» within the next few decades, perhaps as soon as the 2030s. Antarctica’s sea ice is more of a mystery. But at both poles, sea ice is disappearing at an unprecedented rate.

And when the ice ends it’s not just the ends of the Earth that will change. It’s the entire planet.

An already changed Arctic

The Arctic Ocean’s sea ice expands during the winter, peaking in March, before retreating toward the North Pole. It typically reaches its lowest extent in mid-September. It never completely melts away — the North Pole itself is typically surrounded, and up to a fifth of the ice in the Arctic is so-called multiyear ice, persisting for more than a year.

Our understanding of this rhythmic pulse in the Northern Hemisphere stretches back for millennia. Indigenous peoples of the Arctic have passed down knowledge of the sea ice’s extent for thousands of years, particularly around coastal communities. Iceland’s government has been keeping detailed records since the 1600s, while log books and diaries kept during early exploration by ship provide a surprising amount of detail on where and when the Arctic Ocean froze over.

Our ability to understand the ice changed dramatically with the launch of the Nimbus-7 satellite in late 1978. The NASA and NOAA polar-orbiting satellite was fitted with an instrument that provided a way to observe the extent of the sea ice all year round, no matter the weather conditions, by studying the microwave energy bounced back from the surface. Continuous records have been taken since 1979, and the analysis has been deeply troubling. The extent of Arctic sea ice has been decreasing across those four decades, with each of the last 16 years the lowest on record.

Video: Changes in Arctic sea ice

Video credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

For decades, scientists have tried to pinpoint when the total extent of Arctic sea ice will drop below 1 million square kilometers (or about 386,000 square miles) — the marker denoting a «sea ice-free» summer. In 2009, for instance, one study used climate models to determine that this mark would be hit by 2037. Other research has shown that the timing is unpredictable, with analyses suggesting we might still be decades away.

In June, a study in the journal Nature Communications analyzed 41 years of satellite data, from 1979 to 2019, reiterating that human greenhouse gas emissions are the dominant force in reduction of Arctic sea ice. It also generated a flurry of worrying headlines focused on the first ice-free summer, citing the near end of a range that it said had shifted to as early as the 2030s to 2050s. But those headlines gloss over a critical point: The current losses of summer sea ice are already having devastating effects.

«Although the first ice-free Arctic summer has constantly been a point of interest for understanding and communicating climate change, it’s more a symbolic threshold in some sense,» says Zachary Labe, a climate scientist at Princeton University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. «Arctic climate change is already happening now and in all months of the year.»

An Antarctic paradox

From the beginning of the satellite era until 2010, Antarctic sea ice experienced a slight increase, with an acceleration in winter sea ice extent between 2012 and 2014. This was unexpected. Global temperatures have unequivocally risen in this time, largely due to human-induced climate change, raising ocean temperatures. Sea ice should’ve been melting. It didn’t.

The phenomenon was dubbed the Antarctic paradox.

Many climate models haven’t been able to reproduce these effects, though at least one high-resolution model has had success. Though explaining the paradox has been difficult, scientists have several hypotheses.

A visit to Antarctica

Natalie Robinson, a marine physicist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, points out that changing wind patterns, release of freshwater from Antarctica, and ocean stratification could all have played a role over the last four decades, but she says that pointing to one variable as a driver of the increase is virtually impossible. «In reality, all of these processes act simultaneously and influence each other,» she notes.

About seven years ago, the story began to change. Antarctic sea ice extent plummeted in 2016 and hasn’t totally recovered since. In 2023, winter sea ice extent is dramatically lower than we’ve ever seen in the satellite era.

«Antarctic sea-ice extent has now adopted a downward trajectory as expected under warming and is congruent with observations of surface warming in the Southern Ocean,» says Petra Heil, a polar ice scientist with the Australian Antarctic Division. Graphs generated by Labe show the stark decline.

A line graph of Antarctic sea ice extent in 2023 generated by Zachary Labe

The record low extent has scientists concerned. Understanding the paradoxical increase over the past four decades could help unlock the reasons behind this sudden change. Does it represent a shift to a worrying new normal? Or is it merely a blip that can be attributed to the normal range of variability?

«There is certainly a fair bit of concern in the scientific community that it’s the former,» says Robinson.

«And we are racing to find out.»

When the ice ends

The great white sheets at either end of the Earth are particularly good at reflecting sunlight. Sea ice covers about 15% of the world’s oceans across the year, and up to 70% of the heating energy is reflected back into space. Cover that ice with a dusting of snow and up to 90% can be reflected.

When the sea ice disappears, the energy is absorbed by the ocean, raising its temperature. «In a positive feedback loop this ocean warming leads to even more ice loss and global warming,» says Heil. She suggests conceptualizing the impact of sea-ice loss by thinking about sea ice as the air conditioning unit of the Earth.

When the sea ice disappears, our planetary AC unit is being switched off. It becomes harder to reflect that heat into space and we lose the ability to «self-regulate» the Earth’s climate.

The change doesn’t affect just the ocean surface and the Earth’s air temperatures, though. Sea ice also plays one of the most critical roles on the planet in the ocean’s depths. As seawater freezes into ice, salt is expelled, making the surrounding water denser. This heavier, colder water sinks and gets whisked around the planet. Warmer waters are predominantly pushed by wind into the polar regions, then freeze up into ice. The cycle is known as thermohaline circulation.

«This process can be regarded as the starting point/engine of the global oceans’ overturning circulation,» says Jan Lieser, a sea ice scientist with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and University of Tasmania.

image of the global conveyor belt with red arrows signifiying warmer water pushing around into the poles and blue arrows signifying colder deep currents

As the oceans continue to warm at both poles and sea ice extent decreases, this deep ocean current is likely to be disturbed. The knock-on effects could disrupt the polar ecosystems as nutrients and ocean biogeochemistry are altered, particularly in the Southern Ocean, where circulation is also heavily influenced by Antarctic meltwater and the currents already show signs of slowdown.

The atmosphere and ocean systems are incredibly complex and intertwined. Though the focus has long been on the extent of the sea ice, thickness also plays a role. So does snow cover. These measurements are harder to include in models because they’ve traditionally been difficult to gather. There are also differences at either pole. The Arctic typically has had thicker sea ice lasting for years, whereas Antarctic sea ice freezes new each year.

It now seems highly unlikely that the current declines can be stopped but Heil, and her colleague Melinda Webster from the University of Washington, say «it’s possible to slow and mitigate further detrimental effects of a warming climate by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and implementing ways to reduce existing atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations to levels that can sustain a habitable climate.»

On June 16, Heil and Webster, and more than 60 other polar scientists responded to the changes to the poles by calling for «urgent intensification of national and international research and observational capabilities in view of rapid Arctic and Antarctic change.»

«Action is required now,» she says, «to give future generations a fighting chance to mitigate the negative consequences of a warming climate.»

The anomaly in Antarctica’s sea ice this year, as if sounding its own alarm and affirming Heil’s calls, has only continued its downward trajectory.

Technologies

The Future’s Here: Testing Out Gemini’s Live Camera Mode

Gemini Live’s new camera mode feels like the future when it works. I put it through a stress test with my offbeat collectibles.

«I just spotted your scissors on the table, right next to the green package of pistachios. Do you see them?»

Gemini Live’s chatty new camera feature was right. My scissors were exactly where it said they were, and all I did was pass my camera in front of them at some point during a 15-minute live session of me giving the AI chatbot a tour of my apartment. Google’s been rolling out the new camera mode to all Android phones using the Gemini app for free after a two-week exclusive to Pixel 9 (including the new Pixel 9A) and Galaxy S5 smartphones. So, what exactly is this camera mode and how does it work?

When you start a live session with Gemini, you now how have the option to enable a live camera view, where you can talk to the chatbot and ask it about anything the camera sees. Not only can it identify objects, but you can also ask questions about them — and it works pretty well for the most part. In addition, you can share your screen with Gemini so it can identify things you surface on your phone’s display.

When the new camera feature popped up on my phone, I didn’t hesitate to try it out. In one of my longer tests, I turned it on and started walking through my apartment, asking Gemini what it saw. It identified some fruit, ChapStick and a few other everyday items with no problem. I was wowed when it found my scissors.

That’s because I hadn’t mentioned the scissors at all. Gemini had silently identified them somewhere along the way and then recalled the location with precision. It felt so much like the future, I had to do further testing.

My experiment with Gemini Live’s camera feature was following the lead of the demo that Google did last summer when it first showed off these live video AI capabilities. Gemini reminded the person giving the demo where they’d left their glasses, and it seemed too good to be true. But as I discovered, it was very true indeed.

Gemini Live will recognize a whole lot more than household odds and ends. Google says it’ll help you navigate a crowded train station or figure out the filling of a pastry. It can give you deeper information about artwork, like where an object originated and whether it was a limited edition piece.

It’s more than just a souped-up Google Lens. You talk with it, and it talks to you. I didn’t need to speak to Gemini in any particular way — it was as casual as any conversation. Way better than talking with the old Google Assistant that the company is quickly phasing out.

Google also released a new YouTube video for the April 2025 Pixel Drop showcasing the feature, and there’s now a dedicated page on the Google Store for it.

To get started, you can go live with Gemini, enable the camera and start talking. That’s it.

Gemini Live follows on from Google’s Project Astra, first revealed last year as possibly the company’s biggest «we’re in the future» feature, an experimental next step for generative AI capabilities, beyond your simply typing or even speaking prompts into a chatbot like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. It comes as AI companies continue to dramatically increase the skills of AI tools, from video generation to raw processing power. Similar to Gemini Live, there’s Apple’s Visual Intelligence, which the iPhone maker released in a beta form late last year.

My big takeaway is that a feature like Gemini Live has the potential to change how we interact with the world around us, melding our digital and physical worlds together just by holding your camera in front of almost anything.

I put Gemini Live to a real test

The first time I tried it, Gemini was shockingly accurate when I placed a very specific gaming collectible of a stuffed rabbit in my camera’s view. The second time, I showed it to a friend in an art gallery. It identified the tortoise on a cross (don’t ask me) and immediately identified and translated the kanji right next to the tortoise, giving both of us chills and leaving us more than a little creeped out. In a good way, I think.

I got to thinking about how I could stress-test the feature. I tried to screen-record it in action, but it consistently fell apart at that task. And what if I went off the beaten path with it? I’m a huge fan of the horror genre — movies, TV shows, video games — and have countless collectibles, trinkets and what have you. How well would it do with more obscure stuff — like my horror-themed collectibles?

First, let me say that Gemini can be both absolutely incredible and ridiculously frustrating in the same round of questions. I had roughly 11 objects that I was asking Gemini to identify, and it would sometimes get worse the longer the live session ran, so I had to limit sessions to only one or two objects. My guess is that Gemini attempted to use contextual information from previously identified objects to guess new objects put in front of it, which sort of makes sense, but ultimately, neither I nor it benefited from this.

Sometimes, Gemini was just on point, easily landing the correct answers with no fuss or confusion, but this tended to happen with more recent or popular objects. For example, I was surprised when it immediately guessed one of my test objects was not only from Destiny 2, but was a limited edition from a seasonal event from last year.

At other times, Gemini would be way off the mark, and I would need to give it more hints to get into the ballpark of the right answer. And sometimes, it seemed as though Gemini was taking context from my previous live sessions to come up with answers, identifying multiple objects as coming from Silent Hill when they were not. I have a display case dedicated to the game series, so I could see why it would want to dip into that territory quickly.

Gemini can get full-on bugged out at times. On more than one occasion, Gemini misidentified one of the items as a made-up character from the unreleased Silent Hill: f game, clearly merging pieces of different titles into something that never was. The other consistent bug I experienced was when Gemini would produce an incorrect answer, and I would correct it and hint closer at the answer — or straight up give it the answer, only to have it repeat the incorrect answer as if it was a new guess. When that happened, I would close the session and start a new one, which wasn’t always helpful.

One trick I found was that some conversations did better than others. If I scrolled through my Gemini conversation list, tapped an old chat that had gotten a specific item correct, and then went live again from that chat, it would be able to identify the items without issue. While that’s not necessarily surprising, it was interesting to see that some conversations worked better than others, even if you used the same language.

Google didn’t respond to my requests for more information on how Gemini Live works.

I wanted Gemini to successfully answer my sometimes highly specific questions, so I provided plenty of hints to get there. The nudges were often helpful, but not always. Below are a series of objects I tried to get Gemini to identify and provide information about.

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for April 26, #1407

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle No. 1,407 for April 26. Hint: Fans of a certain musical group will rock out with this puzzle.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle isn’t too tough. The letters are fairly common, and fans of a certain rock band might get a kick out of the answer. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has no repeated letters.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

There is one vowel in today’s Wordle answer.

Wordle hint No. 3: Start letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with the letter C.

Wordle hint No. 4: Rock out

Today’s Wordle answer is the name of a legendary English rock band.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer can refer to a violent confrontation.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is CLASH.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, April 25, No. 1406 was KNOWN.

Recent Wordle answers

April 21, No. 1402: SPATE

April 22, No. 1403: ARTSY

April 23, No. 1404: OZONE.

April 24, No. 1405: GENIE

What’s the best Wordle starting word?

Don’t be afraid to use our tip sheet ranking all the letters in the alphabet by frequency of uses. In short, you want starter words that lean heavy on E, A and R, and don’t contain Z, J and Q.

Some solid starter words to try:

ADIEU

TRAIN

STARE

NOISE

Technologies

T-Mobile Adds New Top 5G Plans, T-Satellite and New 5-Year Price Locks

The new top unlimited plans, Experience More and Experience Beyond, shave some costs and add data and satellite options.

Just two years after expanding its lineup of cellular plans, T-Mobile this week announced two new plans that replace its Go5G Plus and Go5G Next offerings, refreshed its prepaid Metro line and wrapped them all in a promised five-year pricing guarantee.

To convert more subscribers, the carrier is also offering up to $800 to help customers pay off phone balances when switching from another carrier.

In a briefing with CNET, Jon Friar, president of T-Mobile’s consumer group, explained why the company is revamping and simplifying its array of mobile plans. «The pain point that’s out there over the last couple of years is rising costs all around consumers,» Friar said. «For us to be able to bring more value and even lower prices on [plans like] Experience More versus our former Go5G Plus is a huge win for consumers.»

The new plans went into effect April 23.

With these changes, CNET is already hard at work updating our picks for Best T-Mobile Plans, so check back soon for our recommendations.

More Experiences to define the T-Mobile experience

The top of the new T-Mobile postpaid lineup is two new plans: Experience More and Experience Beyond.

Experience More is the next generation of the Go5G Plus plan, which has unlimited 5G and 4G LTE access and unlimited Premium Data (download speeds up to 418Mbps and upload speeds up to 31Mbps). High-speed hotspot data is bumped up to 60GB from 50GB per month. The monthly price is now $5 lower per line than Go5G Plus.

The Experience More plan also gets free T-Satellite with Starlink service (the new name for T-Mobile’s satellite feature that uses Starlink’s constellation of satellites) through the end of 2025. Although T-Satellite is still officially in beta until July, customers can continue to get free access to the beta starting now. At the start of the new year, the service will cost $10 per month, a $5 drop from T-Mobile’s originally announced pricing. T-Satellite will be open to customers of other carriers for the same pricing beginning in July.

The new top-tier plan, Experience Beyond, also comes in $5 per line cheaper than its predecessor, Go5G Next. It has 250GB of high-speed hotspot data per month, up from 50GB, and more data when you’re traveling outside the US: 30GB in Canada and Mexico (versus 15GB) and 15GB in 215 countries (up from 5GB). T-Satellite service is included in the Experience Beyond plan.

However, one small change to the Experience plans affects that pricing: Taxes and fees, previously included in the Go5G Plus and Go5G Next prices, are now broken out separately. T-Mobile recently announced that one such fee, the Regulatory Programs and Telco Recovery Fee, would increase up to 50 cents per month.

According to T-Mobile, the Experience Beyond rates and features will be «rolling out soon» for customers currently on the Go5G Next plan.

The Essentials plan is staying in the lineup at the same cost of $60 per month for a single line, the same 50GB of Premium Data and unlimited 5G and 4G LTE data. High-speed hotspot data is an optional $10 add-on, as is T-Satellite access, for $15 (both per month).

Also still in the mix is the Essentials Saver plan, an affordable option that has ranked high in CNET’s Best Cellphone Plans recommendations.

Corresponding T-Mobile plans, such as those for military, first responders and people age 55 and older are also getting refreshed with the new lineup.

T-Mobile’s plan shakeup is being driven in part by the current economic climate. Explaining the rationale behind the price reductions and the streamlined number of plans, Mike Katz, president of marketing, innovation and experience at T-Mobile told CNET, «We’re in a weird time right now where prices everywhere are going up and they’ve happened over the last several years. We felt like there was an opportunity to compete with some simplicity, but more importantly, some peace of mind for customers.»

Existing customers who want to switch to one of the new plans can do so at the same rates offered to new customers. Or, if a current plan still works for them, they can continue without changes (although keep in mind that T-Mobile earlier this year increased prices for some legacy plans).

Five years of price stability

It’s nearly impossible to think about prices these days without warily eyeing how tariffs and US economic policy will affect what we pay for things. So it’s not surprising to see carriers implement some cost stability into their plans. For instance, Verizon recently locked prices for three years on their plans.

Now, T-Mobile is building a five-year price guarantee for its T-Mobile and Metro plans. That pricing applies to talk, text and data amounts — not necessarily taxes and other fees that can fluctuate.

Given the uncertain outlook, it seems counterintuitive to lock in a longer rate. When asked about this, Katz said, «We feel like our job is to solve pain points for customers and we feel like this helps with this exact sentiment. It shifts the risk from customers to us. We’ll take the risk so they don’t have to.»

The price hold applies to new customers signing up for the plans as well as current customers switching to one. T-Mobile is offering the same deals and pricing to new and existing subscribers. Also, the five-year deal applies to pricing; it’s not a five-year plan commitment.

More money and options to encourage switchers

The promise of a five-year price guarantee is also intended to lure people from other carriers, particularly AT&T and Verizon. As further incentive, T-Mobile is offering up to $800 per line (distributed via a virtual prepaid Mastercard) to help pay off other carriers’ device contracts. This is a limited-time offer. There are also options to trade in old devices, including locked phones, to get up to four new flagship phones.

Or, if getting out of a contract isn’t an issue, T-Mobile can offer $200 in credit (up to $800 for four lines) to bring an existing number to the network.

Four new Metro prepaid plans

On the prepaid side, T-Mobile is rolling out four new Metro plans, which are also covered by the new five-year price guarantee:

• Metro Starter costs $25 per line per month for a family of four and there is no need to bring an existing number. (The cost is $105 the first month.)

• Metro Starter Plus runs $40 per month for a new phone, unlimited talk, text and 5G data when bringing an existing number. For $65 per month, new customers can get two lines and two new Samsung A15 phones. No autopay is required.

• Metro Flex Unlimited is $30 per line per month with autopay for four lines ($125 the first month) with unlimited talk, text and 5G data.

• Metro Flex Unlimited Plus costs $60 per line per month, then $35 for lines two and three and then lowers the price of the fourth line to $10 per month as more family members are added. Adding a tablet or smartwatch to an existing line costs $5. And streaming video, such as from the included Amazon Prime membership, comes through at HD quality.

See more: If you’re looking for phone plans, you may also be looking for a new cell phone. Here are CNET’s picks.