It is a known fact that the effects of climate change can be best seen in the Arctic, where the ice continues to decline due to global warming and now a new animation released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is a startling illustration of the effect of climate change on earth.

NASA and NOAA have already declared 2014 as the hottest year in recorded history.

"This is the latest in a series of warm years, in a series of warm decades," Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Joby Warrick and Chris Mooney of The Washington Post.

The announcement was based on weather records dating back more than 130 years. It stressed that warming oceans are driving much of the increase in temperature.

The ice of sea expands every winter to fill almost the entire Arctic Ocean basin but it shrinks in the summer. The ice which does not melts becomes thicker and keeps on surviving. This ice is called the perennial ice in the Arctic and its amount has declined since the 1980s.

A video released by NOAA on Wednesday shows the relative amount of ice from 1987 through November 2014. In the animation, the oldest ice, more than nine years old, as white and the youngest, first-year ice, as dark blue.

NOAA explained: "In September 2012, Arctic sea ice melt broke all previous records - While perennial ice increased between 2013 and 2014, the long-term trend continues to be downward."