Arctic Sea Ice

Lowest maximum on record (again)

After a drop of almost 262 thousand km2 in just three days, it looks highly likely that the maximum for sea ice extent was reached two weeks ago, according to the data provided by JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (via ADS-NiPR ; it used to be provided by IJIS).

It's a new lowest maximum record, and the third time in a row that extent stayed below the 14 million km2 mark. The previous lowest max on record was reached in 2015 (13.942 million km2), almost beaten last year (13.959 million km2), but this year SIE went lower still and peaked at 13.878 million km2.

This graph by commenter Deeenngee, posted on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum, visualizes maximums from the past and the trajectory to this year's max:

It looks highly likely that the max has been reached for NSIDC daily SIE as well (graph provided by Jim Hunt from the Great White Con blog), a third record low in a row if my eyes don't deceive me:

The drops are mostly driven by sea ice reductions in the Bering and Okhotsk Seas, but will soon be joined by drops on the Atlantic side of the Arctic as well, as the ice is pretty thin there, according to the Uni Bremen SMOS thin sea ice map.

Given the wind forecast, I also expect further sea ice retreat from the southern shores of Novaya Zemlya (similar to what happened in 2011 and 2012):

PIOMAS March 2017

Another month has passed and so here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center:

There haven't been any major changes compared to last month, and that's good, because it means things haven't gotten worse (according to PIOMAS). February 2017 saw an increase that was almost identical to the average for the last 10 years. Nevertheless, the difference with number 2, has increased from 1776 to 1851 km3. At the same time the difference with last year (now third in the ranking) has been reduced considerably, from 2374 to 1975 km3.

Here's how the differences with previous years have evolved from last month:

And here's Wipneus' version, showing the gap is still intact, but hasn't become larger: