Arctic Sea Ice Maximum 2023

  • Released Wednesday, March 15, 2023
  • Updated Wednesday, March 22, 2023 at 4:41PM
  • ID: 5091

Animation of arctic sea ice from the September 18, 2022 minimum to the the March 6, 2023 maximum

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 2023 maximum, which occurred on March 6. On this day the extent of the Arctic sea ice cover peaked at 14.62 million square kilometers (5.64 million square miles), making it the fifth lowest yearly maximum extent on record. This year’s maximum is 1.03 million sq km below the 1981-2010 average Arctic maximum of 15.65 million sq km. The trend in the maximum is -41,200 sq km per year or -2.6 % per decade relative to the 1981-201 average.
Arctic sea ice maximum, March 6, 2023<p><p>

Arctic sea ice maximum, March 6, 2023



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.



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