The Arctic ― and, for completely unrelated reasons, the Antarctic ― just closed out November with less ice than any other year in history.

But the real cause for alarm isn’t last month’s warming blip in the Arctic that temporarily stalled ice growth, an anomaly that happens from time to time. Nor is it the concurrent loss of ice in the Antarctic ― since, to the best of our knowledge, the behavior of sea ice in one hemisphere has nothing to do with the behavior of sea ice in the other.

The scariest part of all this is the long-term warming trend it follows.

“The 10 lowest years [of Arctic sea ice] have all occurred in the last 10 years,” said Julienne Stroeve, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.