Arctic Sea Ice
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NASA
NASA Scientists Take to Air and Space to Study Arctic Sea Ice
This month, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California are testing a spacecraft sensor that will help measure how quickly Arctic sea ice is disappearing. And while that instrument won’t launch for another year, scientists started preparing for its use during a recent field campaign in the Canadian wilderness. Researchers spent two weeks in April flying above the…
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NASA
Barents Sea Tied to Low Arctic Sea Ice
At the top of the planet, the cap of sea ice across Arctic waters grows and shrinks with the seasons, usually reaching its annual maximum extent in March. In 2026, this peak occurred on March 15, when the extent reached 14.29 million square kilometers, matching the lowest maximum observed since satellite monitoring began in 1979. One of the key areas contributing…
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NASA
Cracking Antarctic Sea Ice
‘Tis the season for long and ruler-straight cracks in McMurdo Sound’s sea ice. Though natural breaks in sea ice are called leads, the better term for the human-made fracture seen in these satellite images is a ship channel. In the austral summer, usually in January, an icebreaker rams a path through the fast ice—a type of sea ice that is anchored to the shore—that often covers…
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NASA
Arctic Sea Ice Reaches Annual Low
With the end of summer approaching in the Northern Hemisphere, the extent of sea ice in the Arctic shrank to its annual minimum on Sept. 10, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The total sea ice coverage was tied with 2008 for the 10th-lowest on record at 1.78 million square miles (4.60 million square kilometers).…
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NASA
Thinning Arctic Sea Ice
Sea ice is frozen seawater that floats in the ocean. This photo, taken from NASA’s Gulfstream V Research Aircraft on July 21, 2022, shows Arctic sea ice in the Lincoln Sea north of Greenland. This image is the NASA Science Image of the Month for September 2025. Each month, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate chooses an image to feature, offering desktop wallpaper downloads,…
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NASA
Arctic Sea Ice Near Historic Low; Antarctic Ice Continues Decline
Arctic sea ice retreated to near-historic lows in the Northern Hemisphere this summer, likely melting to its minimum extent for the year on Sept.11, 2024, according to researchers at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The decline continues the decades-long trend of shrinking and thinning ice cover in the Arctic Ocean. The amount of frozen seawater…
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