Antarctic Sea Ice Maximum, 2024

  • Released Thursday, October 3, 2024
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Animation Antarctic sea ice minimum extent, February 21 2023, to its maximum, September 19 2024

After growing through the southern hemisphere fall and winter, sea ice in the Antarctic appears to have reached its annual maximum extent. The image above shows the ice extent—defined as the total area in which the ice concentration is at least 15 percent—at its 2024 maximum, which occurred on September 19. On this day the extent of the Antarctic sea ice cover peaked at 17.16 million square kilometers (6.63 million square miles), making it the second lowest yearly maximum extent on record. This year’s maximum is 1.55 million sq km below the 1981-2010 average Antarctic maximum of 18.71 million sq km.

Animation Antarctic sea ice minimum extent, February 21 2023, to its maximum, September 19 2024, mobile fomat

Credits

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

This page was originally published on Thursday, October 3, 2024.
This page was last updated on Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 12:15 AM EDT.

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.