Its cold at the pole, and there’s a lot of ice on the water. It’s what you’d expect, right? It’s always cold in December in the Land of Darkness at Noon. But how does 12/22 compare with other Decembers?

https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/1999/01/Figure3-350×270.png

But for what it’s worth, on 4 Jan ’23, there was 621,000 km^2 less ice on the polar sea than exactly one year earlier.

The downward linear trend in December sea ice extent over the 45-year satellite record is 44,400 square kilometers (17,100 square miles) per year, or 3.5 percent per decade relative to the 1981 to 2010 average. Based on the linear trend, since 1978, November has lost 2.28 million square kilometers (880,000 square miles). This is equivalent to about 1.5 times the size of Alaska.