A webspace devoted to the current state of our cryosphere Archive of daily polar sea ice cap concentrations (1979 - present) Dowload the historical sea ice dataset here Questions and/or comments about polar science to cryosphere-science@atmos.uiuc.edu Requests about polar data to cryosphere-data@atmos.uiuc.edu

sea ice animations:  1978-2006 (46 MB quicktime)    2001-2006 (11 MB quicktime) recent Arctic ice area N. hemispheric ice area N. hemispheric anomaly interactive chart tale of the tape

May 21, 2015: response to recent article in Forbes.

30-day animation 30-day animation 30-day animation 30-day animation 30-day animation Arctic Climate Feedbacks     Arctic Weather Forecasts Latest regional sea ice coverage and anomalies Choose a region from the map left or the list below : Arctic Basin Laptev Sea Bering Sea East Siberian Sea St. Lawrence Chukchi Sea Baffin/Newfoundland Bay Beaufort Sea Greenland Sea Canadian Archipelago Barents Sea Hudson Bay Kara Sea Sea of Okhotsk recent SH ice area S. hemisphere ice area S. hemisphere ice anomaly interactive chart

Southern Hemisphere click here to add solar shading in images 30-day animation 30-day animation 30-day animation 30-day animation 30-day animation Global sea ice area Snow and ice data provided by the National Center for Environmental Prediction/NOAA, NSIDC, U. Bremen send comments about this site

Older products:

The 40Mb animation at the left shows the 2007 dramatic loss of multiyear sea ice throughout the year. Multiyear sea ice is older and generally thicker ice - sea ice that has survived at least one melt season (shown in brighter white). Timeseries of annual and seasonal sea ice extent from 1901-2010. Compare side-by-side images of Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent for any two dates in the satellite record (1979-present). View the updated high resolution animation of the 2007 sea ice retreat (01/01/2007 - 09/23/2007). WARNING - This quicktime animation is very large at 200Mb, but it illustrates nicely the temporal evolution of the 2007 sea ice. Animation: 2007 sea ice minimum animation Additional years: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Peruse an archive of map displays of the atmospheric and radiative climatic conditions leading up to the record setting Northern Hemisphere sea ice minimum of 2007: sea ice autopsy

Now you can access your favorite Cryosphere Today images from the middle of the pack ice, provided you have a nearby cell tower and/or wifi node. Visit our custom Cryosphere Today mobile web application created specifically for the iPod touch and iPhone handheld devices.

Follow this link for some background information on historic sea ice minima.

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