Antarctic Sea Ice Minimum, 2024

  • Released Wednesday, February 28, 2024
View full credits
Antarctic sea ice minimum extent, February 20 2024

Antarctic sea ice minimum extent, February 20 2024

On February 20th, 2024, Antarctic sea ice officially reached its minimum extent for the year.

This cycle of growth and melting occurs every year, with the ice reaching its smallest size during the southern hemisphere's summer.

This year's melt season concluded with a sea ice area of 768,000 square miles (1.99 million square kilometers) compared to the average minimum observed during the satellite era (1981-2010).

That is slightly larger than the state of Texas.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, this marks the second-lowest sea ice extent recorded by satellites, reflecting a trend of declining coverage over time.

The extent of sea ice is critical for polar ecosystems and has far-reaching implications for Earth's climate and weather patterns.

Animation of Antarctic sea ice maximum extent, September 10 2023, to its minimum, February 20 2024

Animation of Antarctic sea ice maximum extent, September 10 2023, to its minimum, February 20 2024, vertical format

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Wednesday, February 28, 2024.
This page was last updated on Friday, March 1, 2024 at 1:01 PM EST.

Datasets used

  • BMNG (Blue Marble: Next Generation) [Terra and Aqua: MODIS]

    ID: 508
    Sensor: MODIS

    Credit: The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).

    This dataset can be found at: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/

    See all pages that use this dataset

  • 10 km Daily Sea Ice Concentration [SHIZUKU (GCOM-W1): AMSR2]

    ID: 795
    Type: Observed Data Sensor: AMSR2 Collected by: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

    Credit: AMSR2 data courtesy of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

    See all pages that use this dataset

  • 10 km Daily 89 GHz Brightness Temperature [SHIZUKU (GCOM-W1): AMSR2]

    ID: 796
    Type: Observed Data Sensor: AMSR2 Collected by: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

    Credit: AMSR2 data courtesy of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

    See all pages that use this dataset

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.