The map at the top of this page shows the sea ice level on September 16, 2021. The ice level (white) on that day– specified as the overall area in which the ice concentration is at least 15 percent– determined 4.72 million square kilometers (1.82 million square miles)– higher than in current years. Sea ice levels in 2020 and 2019 were the second and 3rd most affordable on record at 3.74 million square kilometers in 2020 and 4.14 million in 2019.
Long-lasting patterns are more essential than any single year, and those patterns are still pointing highly downward. The 15 most affordable minimum levels in the 43-year satellite record have all took place in the previous 15 years (2007 to 2021).
Sea ice is likewise trending more youthful and thinner; that is, there is less multi-year ice that makes it through a summertime season and thickens over the subsequent winter. According to Meier, data reveal that sea ice this summertime contained the second-lowest quantity of multi-year ice on record.
Parkinson and Meier believe that this summer season, lots of ice was close to vanishing but never ever quite reached that point– maintaining level however not density. “There does appear to be a reasonable quantity of ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas that appears to have gotten quite thin,” Meier said, “but there simply wasnt quite adequate energy through the summer season to melt it out totally.”
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, utilizing data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Story by Kathryn Hansen and Roberto Molar Candanosa/NASAs Earth Science News Team.
September 16, 2021
Sea ice covered more location this summertime compared to recent years, but it was likewise much thinner.
Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and neighboring basins appears to have struck its yearly minimum degree on September 16, 2021, after waning in the spring and summer. The summer season extent is the twelfth least expensive in the satellite record, according to researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center and NASA.
The map at the top of this page shows the sea ice level on September 16, 2021. The ice degree (white) on that day– specified as the total location in which the ice concentration is at least 15 percent– measured 4.72 million square kilometers (1.82 million square miles)– higher than over the last few years. Sea ice levels in 2020 and 2019 were the third and 2nd lowest on record at 3.74 million square kilometers in 2020 and 4.14 million in 2019.
Less sea ice melted in 2021 even as the planet as a whole was warmer than typical– with new temperature level records in North America and Eurasia, dry spell in the U.S. West, and episodes of intense melting on Greenlands ice sheet. However farther north, conditions stayed generally cool and rainy across the Arctic Ocean. For much of the summer, low pressure over the Arctic brought cloudy skies, which restricts the quantity of sunshine that can spur and reach the ice melting. Storms can also spread out the ice out, slowing the decrease of its level.
Such differences from place-to-place and year-to-year are to be expected. “I do not see any disparity with the Arctic sea ice extent not breaking any records this year despite international temperature levels being high,” said Claire Parkinson, a sea ice scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. “The key is that the Earth is large and there are differences regionally.”
” We dont expect sea ice to be lower every year,” added Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, “much like we do not anticipate temperature levels to be warmer all over on Earth every year even with worldwide warming.”
“I do not see any inconsistency with the Arctic sea ice extent not breaking any records this year despite worldwide temperature levels being high,” stated Claire Parkinson, a sea ice scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight.
