Arctic Sea Ice Maximum 2020

  • Released Saturday, March 21st, 2020
  • Updated Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023 at 1:45PM
  • ID: 4811
Arctic Sea Ice Maximum Extent 2020, With Labels

Arctic Sea Ice Maximum Extent 2020, With Labels

After growing through the fall and winter, sea ice in the Arctic appears to have reached its annual maximum extent. The image above shows the ice extent—defined as the total area in which the ice concentration is at least 15 percent—at its 2020 maximum, which occurred on March 5. On this day the extent of the Arctic sea ice cover peaked at 15.05 million square kilometers (5.81 million square miles). While this maximum was the largest since 2013, it remained 590,000 square kilometers (230,000 square miles) below the average maximum for the 1981-2010 period.
Arctic Sea Ice Maximum Extent 2020, No Labels

Arctic Sea Ice Maximum Extent 2020, No Labels

Credits

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

Datasets used in this visualization

SHIZUKU (GCOM-W1) 10 km Daily 89 GHz Brightness Temperature (Collected with the AMSR2 sensor)
Observed Data Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

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

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SHIZUKU (GCOM-W1) 10 km Daily Sea Ice Concentration (Collected with the AMSR2 sensor)
Observed Data Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

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

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Terra and Aqua BMNG (A.K.A. Blue Marble: Next Generation) (Collected with the MODIS sensor)

Credit: The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).

Dataset can be found at: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/

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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.