Annual Arctic Minimum Sea Ice from 1979 - 2008 designed for Science On a Sphere (SOS) and WMS

  • Released Thursday, October 30, 2008
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In 2007, Arctic summer sea ice reached its lowest extent on record - nearly 25% less than the previous low set in 2005. At the end of each summer, the sea ice cover reaches its minimum extent and what is left, called the perennial ice cover, consists mainly of thick multi-year ice floes. The area of the perennial ice has been steadily decreasing since the satellite record began in 1979, at a rate of about 10% per decade. But the 2007 minimum, reached on September 14, is far below the previous record made in 2005 and is about 38% lower than the climatological average.

This visualization shows the annual Arctic sea ice minimum from 1979 to 2008 on a Cartesian grid with a transparent background for use in Science On a Sphere and WMS.

Yearly Arctic minimum sea ice 1979 -2008 from SSMI/SMMR with a transparent background.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Thursday, October 30, 2008.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:55 PM EDT.

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Datasets used

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