Sea Ice Cover Reaches Record Low

Figure 12.4

This figure appears in chapter 12 of the Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment report.

http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/highlights/report-findings/our-changing-climate/graphics/arctic-sea-ice-decline

In August and September 2012, sea ice covered less of the Arctic Ocean than any time since the beginning of reliable satellite measurements (1979). The long-term retreat of sea ice has occurred faster than climate models had predicted. The average minimum extent of sea ice for 1979-2000 was 2.59 million square miles. The image on the left shows Arctic minimum sea ice extent in 1984, which was about the average minimum extent for 1979-2000. The image on the right shows that the extent of sea ice had dropped to 1.32 million square miles at the end of summer 2012. Alaska Native coastal communities rely on sea ice for many reasons, including its role as a buffer against coastal erosion from storms. (Figure source: NASA Earth Observatory 20124599b8b1-534b-4e48-bff1-b381a9ef4998).

When citing this figure, please reference NASA Earth Observatory 20124599b8b1-534b-4e48-bff1-b381a9ef4998.

Free to use with credit to the original figure source.

This figure was created on March 14, 2014.

This figure was derived from instrument advanced-microwave-scanning-radiometer-2 using the activity nca3-sea-ice-cover-reaches-record-low-activity-2. (The NSIDC article uses DMSP SSMIS data while the earthobservatory image comes from AMSR-2 on GCOM-W1)
This figure was derived from Determination of sea ice parameters with the NIMBUS 7 SMMR using the activity nca3-sea-ice-cover-reaches-record-low-activity-2.
This figure was derived from webpage Visualizing the 2012 Sea Ice Minimum using the activity nca3-sea-ice-cover-reaches-record-low-activity-1. (The two images in the input web page were rearranged to generate the figure.)

References :

• webpage Visualizing the 2012 Sea Ice Minimum (4599b8b1)

This figure is composed of these images :