QuikSCAT Antarctic Sea Ice (WMS)

The sea ice around Antarctica grows dramatically from late February, when large parts of the coast are ice-free, to October, when the amount of sea ice effectively doubles the size of the continent. The SeaWinds Scatterometer instrument on the QuikSCAT satellite captures this dramatic ebb and flow and shows the sea ice as dynamic and always moving, even in areas that are ice-bound. This animation shows the sea ice around Antarctica from SeaWinds during 2004. SeaWinds can see individual icebergs if they are large enough, and a large iceberg can be seen for most of the year south of South America as it moves from the Antarctic Peninsula to the South Sandwich Islands. Also visible are the very convoluted and dynamic border between the sea ice and the open sea and holes in the sea ice created by the movement around fixed land features such as islands.