Annual Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Area 1979-2022

  • Released Thursday, May 5, 2022
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Arctic sea ice minimum 1979-2021, with graph

Satellite-based passive microwave images of the sea ice have provided a reliable tool for continuously monitoring changes in the Arctic ice since 1979. Every summer the Arctic ice cap melts down to what scientists call its "minimum" before colder weather begins to cause ice cover to increase. This graph displays the area of the minimum sea ice coverage each year from 1979 through 2021. In 2021, the Arctic minimum sea ice covered an area of 4.13 million square kilometers (1.6 million square miles).

This visualization shows the expanse of the annual minimum Arctic sea ice for each year from 1979 through 2021 as derived from passive microwave data. A graph overlay shows the area in million square kilometers for each year's minimum day.

Arctic sea ice minimum 1979-2021, graph only

Arctic sea ice minimum 1979-2021, background only

Arctic sea ice minimum 1979-2021, by year (each year accessible through dropdown menu)

Arctic sea ice minimum 1979-2021, by year (each year accessible through dropdown menu)

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).

This page was originally published on Thursday, May 5, 2022.
This page was last updated on Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 12:13 AM EDT.

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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.