A newer version of this visualization is available.
Minimum Antarctic Sea Ice 2017
-
- Visualizations by:
- Lori Perkins
-
- Scientific consulting by:
- Claire Parkinson and
- Walt Meier
- View full credits
This movie begins at the 2016 Antarctic maximum on August 31, 2016 and shows daily sea ice concentration until the Antarctic minimum on March 3, 2017. The 2017 minimum had only 2.1 million square kilometers of sea ice extent below the previous lowest minimum extext in the satellite record that occurred in 1997.
This year’s record low annual sea ice minimum of 2.11 million square kilometers was below the previous lowest minimum extent in the satellite record, which occurred in 1997. Antarctic sea ice saw an early maximum extent in 2016, followed by a very rapid loss of ice starting in early September. Since November, daily Antarctic sea ice extent has continuously been at its lowest levels in the satellite record. The ice loss slowed down in February.
“There’s a lot of year-to-year variability in both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, but overall, until last year, the trends in the Antarctic for every single month were toward more sea ice,” said Claire Parkinson, a senior sea ice researcher at Goddard. “Last year was stunningly different, with prominent sea ice decreases in the Antarctic. To think that now the Antarctic sea ice extent is actually reaching a record minimum, that’s definitely of interest.”
The images shown here portray the sea ice as it was observed by the AMSR2 instrument onboard the Japanese Shizuku satellite. The opacity of the sea ice is derived from the AMSR2 sea ice concentration. The blueish white color of the sea ice is derived from the AMSR2 89 GHz brightness temperature. In some of the images. The Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica is shown over the continent.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
-
Visualizers
- Lori Perkins (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
- Cindy Starr (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
-
Writer
- Maria-Jose Vinas Garcia (Telophase)
-
Scientists
- Claire Parkinson (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
- Walt Meier (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
-
Project support
- Joycelyn Thomson Jones (NASA/GSFC)
- Leann Johnson (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
-
Technical support
- Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
-
Sr. data analyst
- Robert Gersten (SGT)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
-
Terra and Aqua BMNG (Blue Marble: Next Generation)
ID: 508Credit: The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).
This dataset can be found at: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/
See all pages that use this dataset -
SHIZUKU (GCOM-W1) 10 km Daily Sea Ice Concentration
ID: 795Credit: AMSR2 data courtesy of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
See all pages that use this dataset -
SHIZUKU (GCOM-W1) 10 km Daily 89 GHz Brightness Temperature
ID: 796Credit: AMSR2 data courtesy of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
See all pages that use this dataset
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.