After a relatively warm winter, a cooler-than-expected spring seemed to point to a lower-than-average, but not particularly ice free Arctic this year. But the arctic is always full of surprises, and now the summer melt is going like gangbusters. Analysts are even talking about maybe another record this year. So far the lowest ice year on record was 2012, when the September minimum dropped to 3.7 million sq km.

Stay tuned to this channel for the July ice extent summary, early in August, and the summer melt summary early in October.

Since we have been making satellite measurements in 1979, the low ice record has been broken in September 1985, 1990, 1995, 2002, 2005, 2007 and 2012. We’re about due for another. The September high ice record has never been broken, it was at its highest point in 1996 and it has never recovered since.

https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_concentration_hires.png

https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_iqr_timeseries.png