Arctic Sea Ice Maximum 2021

  • Released Tuesday, March 30th, 2021
  • Updated Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023 at 1:44PM
  • ID: 4878

2021 Arctic Sea Ice Maximum Extent, Animation, With Dates

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 2021 maximum, which occurred on March 21. On this day the extent of the Arctic sea ice cover peaked at 14.77 million square kilometers (5.70 million square miles), making it the seventh lowest yearly maximum extent on record.
2021 Arctic Sea Ice Maximum Extent, Print-Size Image

2021 Arctic Sea Ice Maximum Extent, Print-Size Image

2021 Arctic Sea Ice Maximum Extent, Animation, No Dates

2021 Arctic Sea Ice Maximum Extent, Animation, Dates Only

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.