Arctic Sea Ice Maximum 2019

  • Released Wednesday, March 20, 2019
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Animation of Arctic sea ice extent between its minimum on September 23, 2018 and its maximum on March 13, 2019.

After growing through the fall and winter, sea ice in the Arctic appears to have reached its annual maximum extent. The 2019 wintertime extent ties with 2007’s as the 7th smallest extent of winter sea ice in the satellite record, according to scientists at the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA.

On March 13, the extent of the Arctic sea ice cover peaked at 5.71 million square miles (14.78 million square kilometers). This winter’s maximum extent is 332,000 square miles (860,000 square kilometers) below the 1981 to 2010 average maximum – equivalent to missing an area of ice larger than the state of Texas.

Animation of Arctic sea ice extent between its minimum on September 23, 2018 and its maximum on March 13, 2019, no dates

Animation of Arctic sea ice extent between its minimum on September 23, 2018 and its maximum on March 13, 2019, no dates

Dates only

Dates only

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Wednesday, March 20, 2019.
This page was last updated on Monday, July 15, 2024 at 12:06 AM EDT.

Datasets used

  • BMNG (Blue Marble: Next Generation) [Terra and Aqua: MODIS]

    ID: 508
    Sensor: MODIS

    Credit: 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

  • 10 km Daily Sea Ice Concentration [SHIZUKU (GCOM-W1): AMSR2]

    ID: 795
    Type: Observed Data Sensor: AMSR2 Collected by: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

    Credit: AMSR2 data courtesy of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

    See all pages that use this dataset

  • 10 km Daily 89 GHz Brightness Temperature [SHIZUKU (GCOM-W1): AMSR2]

    ID: 796
    Type: Observed Data Sensor: AMSR2 Collected by: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

    Credit: 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 on this page, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.