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The sea ice cover in the Arctic and the Antarctic hit new record lows for this time of year, marking the smallest polar ice caps in the 38-year satellite record, U.S. government scientists said. In March, the Arctic ice sheet should be at its biggest, but on March 7 the ice cover reached “a record low wintertime maximum extent,” said a statement by NASA. Data from the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, also showed that on March 3, “sea ice around Antarctica hit its lowest extent ever recorded by satellites at the end of summer in the Southern Hemisphere”.