Arctic Sea Ice Continues a Trend of Shrinking Maximum Extents
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- Visualizations by:
- Cindy Starr
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- Written by:
- Maria-Jose Vinas Garcia
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- Produced by:
- Kathryn Mersmann
- View full credits
Dr. Claire Parkinson explains how and why NASA studies Arctic sea ice.
Music: Children's Carousel by Maxi Schulze [GEMA], Moritz Limmer [GEMA]
Complete transcript available.
Arctic sea ice reached its annual maximum extent on March 17, according to analysis by NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The 2018 extent reached 5.59 million square miles, only about 23,000 square miles larger than the lowest maximum on record, in 2017.
This continues a trend of shrinking sea ice, with the four lowest Arctic sea ice maximum extents on record in the last four years.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
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Visualizer
- Cindy Starr (Global Science and Technology, Inc.) [Lead]
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Writer
- Maria-Jose Vinas Garcia (Telophase) [Lead]
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Scientist
- Claire Parkinson (NASA/GSFC)
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Producer
- Kathryn Mersmann (KBR Wyle Services, LLC) [Lead]
Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Related Pages
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ID: 4628 Visualization
Sea Ice Maximum extent 2018
Read moreThis visualization shows the Arctic sea ice as it expands from October 1, 2017 to its annual maximum extent that occurred on March 17th, 2018.This video is also available on our YouTube channel. || SeaIceMax_2018.1071_print.jpg (1024x576) [195.9 KB] || SeaIceMax_2018_1080p30.mp4 (1920x1080) [41.1 MB] || SeaIceMax_2018_2160p30.mp4 (3840x2160) [134.9 MB] || ArcticSeaIceMax_2018_YouTube_2160p30.mp4 (3840x2160) [171.5 MB] || SeaIceMax_2018_2160p30.webm (3840x2160) [7.6 MB] || frames/3840x2160_16x9_30p/Sea_Ice_with_dates/ (3840x2160) [128.0 KB] ||
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ID: 4510 Visualization
Weekly Animation of Arctic Sea Ice Age with Graph of Ice Age By Area: 1984 - 2016
Read moreOne significant change in the Arctic region in recent years has been the rapid decline in perennial sea ice. Perennial sea ice, also known as multi-year ice, is the portion of the sea ice that survives the summer melt season. Perennial ice may have a life-span of nine years or more and represents the thickest component of the sea ice; perennial ice can grow up to four meters thick. By contrast, first year ice that grows during a single winter is generally at most two meters thick.Below is an animation of the weekly sea ice age between 1984 and 2016. The animation shows the seasonal variability of the ice, growing in the Arctic winter and melting in the summer. In addition, this also shows the changes from year to year, depicting the age of the sea ice in different colors. Younger sea ice, or first-year ice, is shown in a dark shade of blue while the ice that is four years old or older is shown as white. A color scale identifies the age of the intermediary years.A graph in the lower, right corner the quantifies the change over time by showing the area in millions of square kilometers covered by each age category of perennial sea ice. This graph also includes a memory bar - the green line that here represents the current maximum value seen thus far in the animation for the particular week displayed. For example, when showing the first week in September, the memory bar will show the maximum value seen for all prior years' first week of September since the beginning of the animation (January 1, 1984).Correction: The original release on 10/28/2016 incorrectly labeled the oldest category on the graph as "5+". This was corrected to read "4+" on 10/30/2016. ||
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