A huge discovery in the Arctic and Antarctic could totally change the battle for public perception of global warming, as for the first time ever, sea ice at both poles will be at record lows at this time of year. This has been a regular occurrence for sea ice in the Arctic, but Antarctic sea ice had been rising in recent years and gave fuel to climate change skeptics.

There had been a record high in the Antarctic sea ice extent between 2012 and 2014, and people who questioned global warming used this to claim that climate change was a hoax invented by scientists for unknown reasons. However, scientists said these were just short-term natural variations, and global warming would soon cause this extent to start melting as well.

Now, it appears that this is coming to pass.

“It looks like, since the beginning of October, that for the first time we are seeing both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice running at record low levels,” Walt Meier, a research scientist with the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said according to a CNN report.

Richard James, a meteorologist who writes a blog on climate change indicators near the poles, has noticed a large amount of warm air in the Arctic Ocean based on reports from 19 weather stations in the region. A large region of super cold polar air has been lingering over Siberia instead.

He wrote: “Looking at recent daily temperature anomalies for the same 19 stations, it is amazing to see that the warmth has become even more pronounced since the end of October; the 19-station mean anomaly reached +9.6°C last Thursday (November 3), and on Friday the coolest of the stations was 5.4°C warmer than normal.  In terms of standard deviations, Thursday’s mean anomaly was the highest of any day from 1971-present.”