Acquired June 28, 2010, this natural-color mosaic shows largely sunny skies over the Arctic, occurring at the same time as near round-the-clock sunlight.
In the Arctic, sea ice extent fluctuates with the seasons. It reaches its peak extent in March, near the end of Northern Hemisphere winter, and its minimum extent in September, at the end of the summer thaw. In September 2007, Arctic sea ice extent was the smallest area on record since satellites began collecting measurements about 30 years ago.
A new NASA analysis has quantified for the first time the amount of “multi-year” ice that is being lost from the Arctic Ocean due to melting as opposed to export.
The fragility of our home planet is apparent in this view of the whole Arctic region in September 2012, when sea ice reached its lowest minimum extent ever observed in the satellite record.
Scientists on NASA’s P-3B research plane get eye-popping views of rarely seen or photographed ice. The latest round of Operation IceBridge flights concluded on May 2, 2013.
Since satellites began monitoring sea ice in 1979, researchers have observed a decline in the average extent of Arctic sea ice in every month of the year.