A Happy New Year to our loyal reader(s) from the shores of (the now frozen) Santa’s Summer Swimming Pool:
Note that for the hardy, swimming is still possible north of Svalbard, in parts of Hudson Bay and the North Water Polynya.
At the end of 2025 JAXA extent was 2nd lowest for the date, albeit in a “statistical tie” with 2024 and 2017:
NSIDC average extent for December is lowest in the satellite era by a considerable margin:
The latest Alfred Wegener Institute sea ice concentration map shows that the Pacific side of the Central Arctic Basin is now almost completely refrozen:
On the Atlantic side of the Arctic the Kara Sea is rapidly refreezing:
However, sea ice extent in the Barents Sea and Baffin Bay is currently lowest for the date in the AMSR2 record:
Pan Arctic JAXA/ViSHOP extent is currently lowest for the date in the satellite era:
JAXA/ViSHOP extent finished the month of March “lowest for the date” once again:
However, since then the graph has been “flatlining” and extent is now above 2019 and rapidly approaching the rest of the recent pack.
At the end of March PIOMAS Arctic sea ice volume had increased to 21.21 thousand km³, still 2nd lowest for the date in the PIOMAS record:
Here is the corresponding PIOMAS sea ice thickness map for March 31st 2025:
For comparison purposes, here is the “near real time” CryoSat-2/SMOS merged thickness data from the Alfred Wegener Institute:
Continue reading Facts About the Arctic in April 2025After spending several weeks in the unfortunate position of lowest for the date, JAXA/ViSHOP Arctic sea ice extent has just risen above 2015. By a mere 10,000 km²:
Despite the fact that JAXA extent is still rising, AWI extent has potentially already achieved its maximum value for 2025:
Somewhat belatedly, here is the PIOMAS sea ice thickness map for February 28th 2025:
At the end of February Arctic sea ice volume had increased to 19.32 thousand km³, still 2nd lowest for the date in the PIOMAS record:
For comparison purposes, here is the “near real time” CryoSat-2/SMOS merged thickness data from the Alfred Wegener Institute:
AWI have also released a new version of their thickness product, incorporating additional data from the two Sentinel 3 satellites. The thickness data for February 28th, looks slightly different:
Continue reading Facts About the Arctic in March 2025Happy New Year to one and all.
Whilst waiting for the all important thickness and volume data to arrive, we’ll start the new year in traditional fashion with a graph of JAXA extent:
The 2023 calendar year finished with this particular extent metric sitting at 15th lowest in the satellite era.
From Niall Dollard on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum comes evidence via the Sentinel 1A satellite that an arch formed in the Nares Strait between Greenland and Ellesmere Island in late December:
Since it’s a hot topic on (a)social media at the moment, here too is the Northern Hemisphere Multisensor Snow Extent at the end of 2023:
Please note the current record low NH snow extent. Matt predicts all that is about to change:
Hot off the Scandinavian virtual printing presses, here is the official December Arctic sea ice extent trend graph from the OSI SAF:
That’s “Steve”/Tony’s current metric du jour. When do you suppose he will bring it to the attention of his horde of regular readers? It’s accompanied by this matching concentration map:
Here too is the CryoSat-2/SMOS thickness map for December 31st, in a different format to the one usually used here:
The December PIOMAS modelled gridded thickness data has been released. The calculated volume is 6th lowest in the satellite era:
Here is the equivalent CS2/SMOS volume graph
Here too is the PIOMAS thickness map for December 31st:
This uses the same Greenland down orientation and 2.5 meter maximum scale value as the CS2/SMOS map above.
[Update – January 6th]Here are the NSIDC area numbers from Gerontocrat on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum that Tom mentions below:
Currently 9th lowest for the date. In the satellite era!
[Update – January 8th]The National Snow and Ice Data Center has published the December edition of Arctic Sea Ice News:
The end of 2023 had above average sea ice growth, bringing the daily extent within the interdecile range, the range spanning 90 percent of past sea ice extents for the date. Rapid expansion of ice in the Chukchi and Bering Seas and across Hudson Bay was responsible.
Average Arctic sea ice extent for December 2023 was 12.00 million square kilometers, ninth lowest in the 45-year satellite record . Sea ice extent increased by an average of 87,400 square kilometers per day, markedly faster than the 1981 to 2010 average of 64,100 square kilometers per day.
After a delayed start to the freeze-up in Hudson Bay, sea ice formed quickly from west to east across the bay, leaving only a small area of open ocean near the Belcher Islands at month’s end. In the northern Atlantic, sea ice extent remained below average extent, as has been typical for the past decade.
For December overall, 2023 had the third highest monthly gain in the 45-year record at 2.71 million square kilometers, behind 2006 at 2.85 million square kilometers and 2016 at 2.78 million square kilometers.
Moving on to the “Conditions in context” section:
Warm conditions prevailed over the central Arctic Ocean and Beaufort Sea regions, as well as over Hudson Bay and much of northern Canada, with air temperatures at the 925 millibar level (around 2,500 feet above sea level) 8 to 9 degrees Celsius above the 1991 to 2020 average. Elsewhere, relatively cool conditions prevailed, with air temperatures 2 to 4 degrees Celsius below average in southwestern Alaska, easternmost Russia, Scandinavia, and southeast Greenland. Cool conditions in the Bering and southern Chukchi Seas explain the rapid ice growth there. By contrast, the warm conditions over Hudson Bay, continuing since November, explain its delayed start of ice formation there.
The atmospheric circulation pattern for December was marked by low sea level pressure over the Gulf of Alaska and northern Europe and high sea level pressure over central Russia. This pattern led to cold Arctic air flowing across the Chukchi Sea and into the Bering Sea as well as advection of relatively warm air across Canada into the Beaufort Sea:
NOAA have published the 2023 Arctic Report Card.
Here’s a taste, but there’s much more at the dedicated article linked to above:
A change is as good as a rest, so here’s the AWI “high resolution” AMSR2 Arctic wide sea ice extent graph
It’s currently highest for the date in the AMSR2 era by a significant margin.
Here too is the ice age map for the end of 2023:
Something seems to have gone wrong with the processing of the mid-month PIOMAS gridded thickness data. For the moment we’ll have to make do with just the CryoSat-2/SMOS thickness map:
and volume graph:
With the perennial caveat of a probable upward revision when the reanalysed data is released, Arctic sea ice volume is still close to the bottom of the range during the CryoSat-2 era.
In addition especially for Matt, “Steve”/Tony and numerous others of a “skeptical” persuasion, here are the latest Environment & Climate Change Canada snow extent and snow water equivalent graphs for the northern hemisphere:
Last but certainly not least is the Rutgers Global Snow Lab northern hemisphere snow cover anomaly chart for December:
A winter cyclone is stirring up the far North Atlantic. It’s currently forecast to bottom out later today with a minimum MSLP of 937 hPa:
The storm has been creating a long period swell directed at the ice edge in the Barents Sea. By midnight that swell will be battering the ice in the Fram Strait too:
According to Environment Canada the cyclone bottomed out with an MSLP of 939 hPa at 12 PM UTC yesterday:
Associated with the storm is a pulse of abnormally warm air reaching to the North Pole and beyond:
Here’s how JAXA extent looks as the big swell arrives:
And here’s the lead enhanced AWI AMSR2 concentration map of the Atlantic periphery:
Let’s see how things change over the next few days.
[Update – January 31st]Here’s a preliminary look at the effect of the recent Arctic cyclone and other “weather” on the sea ice in the Fram Strait and Barents & Kara Seas:
There is also another cyclone heading for the Barents Sea. This one is forecast to bottom out at 936 hPa at around midnight tonight near the Norwegian coast:
P.S. The cyclone mentioned just above has been named Storm Ingunn by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute:
👀 This swirl of cloud is #StormIngunn – an intense area of low pressure that's still rapidly deepening
— Met Office (@metoffice) January 31, 2024
😮 Wind gusts of over 120 mph have been reported in the Faroe Islands with the storm now moving towards Norway pic.twitter.com/TNuo52L7MW
A yellow warning for wind has been issued for Scotland, and a red warning for Norway:
The conversation continues over on the February open thread.
Prompted by a comment by Tom in the June open thread, the time has evidently come to open the 2023 Northwest Passage passage thread. First of all let’s get our bearings with the help of this map of the area:
and another map detailing the routes through Canadian Arctic Archipelago that have previously been successfully traversed:
As our starter for ten for 2023, there is already plenty of open water in the Amundsen Gulf, together with plenty of melt ponding on the remaining fast ice in Franklin and Darnley Bays:
Prompted by a comment on the Northwest Passage thread from last year I’m opening the 2021 equivalent earlier than usual, in part because there’s already a lot going on of interest. First of all let’s get our bearings with the help of this map of the area:
and another map detailing the routes through Canadian Arctic Archipelago that have previously been successfully traversed:
The forecast high pressure has arrived and the skies have cleared over the Beaufort Sea, which reveals that the land-fast ice off the Mackenzie Delta has started breaking up:
In addition the snow has been melting along the valley of the Mackenzie River, and the resulting increased flow at the mouth of the delta is flooding the fast ice:
Further to our recent coverage of the voyage of the good ship Polarstern past Kap Morris Jesup comes this video courtesy of Suman Singha:
An animation created with 2745 high resolution Sentinel-1 SAR images.
Sentinel-1 data courtesy Copernicus
Plus the early autumn estimates of Arctic sea ice thickness from CryoSat-2 via the Centre for Polar Observation and Monitoring:
Please note the abnormally thin sea ice to the north of Greenland.
Finally, for the moment at least, here’s the latest Arctic sea ice age information extracted from the October 2018 edition of the NSIDC’s Arctic Sea Ice News:
The “oldest, thickest sea ice in the Arctic” seems to be vanishing before our very eyes.
Our regular reader(s) may recall our extended coverage on the plucky little yacht Northabout‘s ultimately successful attempt to circumnavigate the Arctic Ocean in the summer of 2016?
Many were the skeptics who said she stood no chance of finding a way through some “thick sea ice” apparently blocking her path across the Laptev Sea, but they were proved wrong:
As a thought experiment in the summer of 2018 we’re now thinking the unthinkable. If she put her mind to it could Northabout circumnavigate Greenland in 2018? Let’s take a look at the evidence shall we? The allegedly “oldest, thickest Arctic sea ice” north of Greenland isn’t there any more this summer:
The research icebreaker Polarstern has already inspected the open waters off Kap Morris Jesup, the most northerly tip of Greenland:
What’s more the waters of the Lincoln Sea currently look no more tricky to traverse than the Laptev Sea in August 2016:
In conclusion, for the moment at least, what’s the theoretical solution to our 2018 thought experiment?
Here’s another thought to ponder as well. I don’t suppose it’s in the Alfred Wegener Institute’s PS115 mission plan, but do you suppose Polarstern could circumnavigate Greenland at the moment?
The University of Bremen used not to publish their Arctic sea ice “thinness” maps in summer. However now they do, so here’s a close up of Northern Greenland for August 22nd:
First of all here’s one of our occasional sea ice motion videos:
This one reveals the open water north of Greenland in February as well as the much longer event in August. Next here’s a Sentinel 1B synthetic aperture radar image of the Kap Morris Jesup area from yesterday:
Meanwhile thanks to a heads up from Treform2 on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum comes evidence that on the other side of the Lincoln Sea the last remnants of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf are “disintegrating”:
As already mentioned in our February Arctic overview, another storm is brewing. Here is this morning’s weather forecast for Longyearbyen, the capital of Svalbard:
Much like last month, temperatures are above zero and rain is forecast. That’s because once again the current synoptic chart from Environment Canada shows a warm wet flow from way down south over Svalbard and on into the Central Arctic:
Next here’s the current combined wave and swell height forecast for the Svalbard area:
and here’s the associated wave period forecast:
It’s still showing 10 meter waves with a 15 second period north of Svalbard tomorrow lunchtime. Somewhat unusually for the Arctic these aren’t merely giant wind waves. Zooming in on the Fram Strait and breaking out the underlying primary swell reveals:
A long distance swell of that magnitude is going to cause some damage.
The current ECMWF forecast for a split polar vortex, courtesy of Ice Shieldz on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum:
This is suggestive of more cyclones to come, but sticking with the current one for now, here is the MSLP chart at 00:00 UTC this morning showing the cyclone’s central pressure has dropped to 952 hPa:
Here too is the current WaveWatch III forecast for 15:00 UTC today:
The peak of the swell north of Svalbard is now slightly later than originally forecast, but it’s still enormous!
Here’s a single Sentinel 1B synthetic aperture radar image that captures the position of the ice edge north of Svalbard yesterday quite nicely:
A brief overview of the effect of the recent cyclone on the sea ice in the Arctic via AMSR2:
Click the image to animate it.
An Arctic wide take via Thomas Lavergne on Twitter:
Your daily update on the "big low entering #SeaIce". The "spin" in motion moves East towards Severnaya Zemlya. Some opening from land there, increased flushing through Fram Strait. pic.twitter.com/q4m1CRhmtS
— Thomas Lavergne (@lavergnetho) February 8, 2018
plus the latest AMSR2 concentration map:
An interesting insight into CryoSat-2 sea ice thickness measurements from Stefan Hendricks on Twitter:
Radar altimetry tells you how far the surface waves penetrate into the #seaice cover. Unfortunetaly via a bias in #Cryosat freeboard information. 😉 pic.twitter.com/OxUTcFH94h
— Stefan Hendricks (@sthendric) February 9, 2018
Plus Judah Cohen on the split polar vortex:
GFS wants to keep major #PolarVortex (PV) center over Western Canada after the split and is consistent with predicted westward shift of troughing and #cold across North America but this is not typical following significant PV disruptions. pic.twitter.com/zX7n3rnMpo
— Judah Cohen (@judah47) February 9, 2018