Arctic sea ice – frozen seawater that floats on the ocean – is disappearing because of climate change.
The area sea ice covers at the end of the summer melt – called the minimum extent – has declined 13% per decade since the late 1970s, according to NASA.
Nevertheless, some social media users are sharing a May 25 article from right-wing website WND that claims Arctic sea ice extents reached record highs in May of this year.
"Inconvenient truth for globalists: Arctic ice at 30-year high," reads the headline of the article, which was shared in a May 29 Facebook post.
The article was shared on Facebook more than 2,500 times, according Crowdtangle, a social media analytics tool. It was also shared on Twitter and Reddit.
But the claim is wrong. Arctic sea ice extent in May 2022 was not the highest in 30 years, according to climate agency data.
USA TODAY reached out to the author of the article and Facebook and Reddit users who shared it for comment. The Twitter user could not be reached.
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The May 2022 Arctic sea ice extent was not the highest in 30 years, Walt Meier, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, told USA TODAY in an email.
Overall, May 2022 had the highest May sea ice extent in the last nine years, not the last 30 years, according to the...
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