Multi-year Arctic Sea Ice

  • Released Friday, February 24, 2012
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The most visible change in the Arctic region in recent years has been the rapid decline of the perennial ice cover. The perennial ice is the portion of the sea ice floating on the surface of the ocean that survives the summer. This ice that spans multiple years represents the thickest component of the sea ice cover.

This visualization shows the perennial Arctic sea ice from 1980 to 2012. This is not the sea ice minimum, which occurs in September each year. This measures the perennial sea ice that survives the summer and thus exists for longer than a one-year time span. The measurement for this sea ice was taken during the months of November, December and January each year. The date assigned to the data point is the year of the last measurement (January). The grey disk at the North Pole indicates the region where no satellite data is collected. A graph overlay shows the area's size measured in million square kilometers for each year. The '1980','2008', and '2012' data points are highlighted on the graph.

Multi-year Arctic Sea Ice with Graph Overlay

Multi-year Arctic Sea Ice with Date Overlay

Multi-year Sea Ice (without Graph or Date Overlay)

This image shows the multiyear sea ice in 2012. The grey disk at the North Pole indicates the region where no satellite data was collected.

This image shows the multiyear sea ice in 2012. The grey disk at the North Pole indicates the region where no satellite data was collected.

This image shows the multiyear sea ice in 1980. The grey disk at the North Pole indicates the region where no satellite data was collected.

This image shows the multiyear sea ice in 1980. The grey disk at the North Pole indicates the region where no satellite data was collected.

The graph overlay with transparency

The date overlay with transparency

Credits

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

This page was originally published on Friday, February 24, 2012.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:53 PM EDT.

Datasets used

Note: While we identify the data sets used on this page, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.