Sea Ice Extent 1978-2025

  • Released Thursday, March 27, 2025
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A chart of global sea ice extent from November 1978 to March 2025.

A visualization of global sea ice extent starting in November 1978 and going through March 2025. Arctic sea ice, Antarctic sea ice, and their combined total are shown. On Febuary 12th 2025 the total sea ice reached a record low of 15.7 million square kilometers.

Data is from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Credits

This page was originally published on Thursday, March 27, 2025.
This page was last updated on Thursday, March 27, 2025 at 9:15 AM EDT.

Datasets used

  • Sea Ice Index (Sea Ice Index) [DMSP, DMSP 5D-3/F17, DMSP 5D-3/F18, Nimbus-7: SMMR, SSM/I, SSMIS]

    ID: 1162
    Type: Observed Data Sensor: SMMR, SSM/I, SSMIS Collected by: National Snow and Ice Data Center

    The Sea Ice Index provides a quick look at Arctic- and Antarctic-wide changes in sea ice. It is a source for consistent, up-to-date sea ice extent and concentration images, in PNG format, and data values, in GeoTIFF and ASCII text files, from November 1978 to the present. Sea Ice Index images also depict trends and anomalies in ice cover calculated using a 30-year reference period of 1981 through 2010. The images and data are produced in a consistent way that makes the Index time-series appropriate for use when looking at long-term trends in sea ice cover. Both monthly and daily products are available. However, monthly products are better to use for long-term trend analysis because errors in the daily product tend to be averaged out in the monthly product and because day-to-day variations are often the result of short-term weather.

    Credit: Data Contributors: Florence Fetterer, Kenneth Knowles, Walter Meier, Matthew Savoie, Ann Windnagel

    This dataset can be found at: https://nsidc.org/data/g02135/versions/3#anchor-1

    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.