Daily Arctic Sea Ice - Summer 2009

  • Released Monday, September 7, 2009
  • Updated Sunday, January 11, 2015 at 5:23PM
  • ID: 3631

Sea ice is frozen seawater floating on the surface of the ocean. Some sea ice is semi-permanent, persisting from year to year, and some is seasonal, melting and refreezing from season to season. The sea ice cover reaches its minimum extent at the end of each summer and the remaining ice is called the perennial ice cover.

Duing the summer of 2009, the arctic sea ice reached its minimum extent on September 12th. The 2009 minimum extent was the third lowest extent measured since the beginning of the satellite record in 1979. This animation shows the summer retreat of sea ice over the Arctic from 7/1/2009 through 9/12/2009. The sea ice was defined by a 3-day moving average of the AMSR-E 12.5 km sea ice concentration, showing the region where the sea ice concentration was greater than 15%. The false color of the sea ice was derived from the AMSR-E 6.25 km brightness temperature.



Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio


Series

This visualization can be found in the following series:

Datasets used in this visualization

Aqua Daily L3 6.25 km 89 GHz Brightness Temperature (Tb) (Collected with the AMSR-E sensor)
Aqua Sea Ice Concentration (A.K.A. Level 3 12.5 km Sea Ice Concentration) (Collected with the AMSR-E sensor)

Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.



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