Sea-ice

The yearly maximum (in the Arctic) and minimum (in the Antarctic) sea-ice extent occurs in February/March. With satellite data processed at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, the status of the sea-ice extrema this spring is summarised.

2020 holds the second-lowest sea-ice extent on record in the Arctic, following the record-low in 2012. Therefore we update our daily Arctic sea-ice extent figure which includes the two recent years with the lowest sea-ice extent as reference curves. 

On behalf of the OSI SAF sea-ice team, we are happy to present the new OSI SAF Sea Ice Index v2.1. The index consists of both the sea-ice extent and sea-ice area information and is provided as global, hemispheric, and regional data.

 We are recruiting in a 2-year PostDoc position on Sea Ice Data Assimilation!

 Closing date 23 November!

So far, 2020 is one of the years we have measured the least sea ice in the Arctic. In October, almost four million square kilometers of ice are missing compared to what was common in the 80s. This corresponds to an area ten times the size of Norway.

The summer of 2020 broke several records in the Arctic. Here's an updated status of the Arctic sea-ice conditions in summer 2020.

The July 2020 mean sea-ice extent is the lowest on record for this month in the 40+ years long satellite record, with an averaged value of 8.1 million square kilometers. July 2020 stole the record from July 2012. The 10 years of lowest sea-ice extent for July have all occurred since 2007.

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.

The yearly maximum (in the Arctic) and minimum (in the Antarctic) sea-ice extent occurs in February/March. With satellite data processed at Norwegian Meteorological Institute the sea-ice extent is tracked and described on a daily basis.