This web portal gives access to the latest products and information about sea ice, snow and permafrost - the cryosphere - from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.

News

Rapid snowmelt in the North

June 22, 2020

Following a very snowy winter, with record snow depths in several places, more than half of Troms and Finnmark has melted free of snow in just a couple of weeks.

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snow

Summer in the Arctic

June 5, 2020

Summer is approaching in the Arctic, and the Arctic sea-ice is melting. From a maximum sea-ice extent in March, which this year occurred on March 3rd, with the ice covering 15.2 million km2, the ice-covered area will more than halved by September.

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Arctic

Still a lot of snow in Norway

May 31, 2020

Ratio of snow-covered area for mainland Norway May 28 2020In late May, 60% of the Norwegian mainland is still covered by snow. This is much more than what has been the case for 2016 - 2019. At this time last year 30% of Norway was snow-covered, while the warm spring two years ago led to a total snow cover of 10% at the end of May 2018.

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snow

Strong sea-ice drift for MOSAiC in 2020

May 6, 2020

Following in the footsteps of Nansen and his Fram expedition more than one hundred years ago, the research vessel Polarstern has been frozen into the ice since October, and drifts in the Arctic Ocean towards Svalbard and the Fram Strait. This international expedition is called MOSAiC (https://mosaic-expedition.org/). In 1893-1896 it took Nansen’s ship nearly three years to drift across the Arctic Ocean. For MOSAiC the journey has been less than a year.

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sea-ice