According to the report of Russian satellite network on May 5, a new report released by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Plan (AMAP) working group of the Arctic Council said that the Arctic is melting rapidly and may be completely ice free by 2040. At the same time, a study by the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom found that the rate of ice melting in Antarctica is about one-third of the expected value.

Why is the melting of ice and snow in the Arctic so fast, and the melting of ice and snow in the Antarctic so slow? According to the report, the causes of this problem are complex. On the surface, there are many similarities between the North Pole and the South Pole: they are both cold, sparsely populated and snow covered wastelands located at two levels of the earth. But they are also fundamentally different: the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land (such as Alaska, Canada and northern Russia), while the Antarctic is a land surrounded by sea. It is believed that the Arctic is essentially a huge ice block in the Arctic Ocean, while Antarctica is a land covered with ice and snow.

The report said, "In essence, in Antarctica, the two major impacts of global warming can offset each other. The melting rate of sea ice at both poles is accelerating (the number of sea ice at both poles hit a record low in February), but the snowfall in Antarctica has made some regions form ice sheets".

Climatologists point out that the increase in snowfall is another side effect of climate warming. One consequence of global warming is an increase in ocean evaporation, because the heat of the ocean sends water vapor into the atmosphere. With the increase of water vapor in the atmosphere, the amount of rainfall and snowfall will increase accordingly.

In the past, snowfall in Antarctica was very rare, but the warming of the continent led to more frequent snowfall in Antarctica. However, since the beginning of the 21st century, the amount of ice in the Arctic has been declining steadily.

To put it simply, because the air in the Arctic is very cold, only less water vapor can enter the atmosphere. This means that there is very little material that can form snowfall in the Arctic, which makes snowfall rare.

The Antarctic region has its own wind and ocean current, which insulates it from the trend of global warming, while the wind and ocean in the Atlantic Ocean have a great impact on the Arctic Ocean.