Arctic Sea Ice Extent, Area, and Volume

[bluewave]

The big story in the Arctic last few summers has been the record warmth in the Kara and Barents seas areas with the very low sea ice extent there.

 

https://alaskaclimate.substack.com/p/august-2025-arctic-sea-ice

Regional Sea Ice

 

The Atlantic side of the Arctic has had very low ice extent all summer, with the Barents and Kara Seas almost entirely open water for much of late July and August. The pack ice edge at the end of August was near 82N, 200 km or more north of the Svalbard and Franz Josef Land archipelagos. 

The climate impacts of the lack of ice were dramatic. The only real-time climate station in Franz Josef Land, Polargmo Im. E. T. Krenkelja on Heiss Island at 80.6N, did not record a temperature below freezing in August. At Wiese (Vize) Island, a small island in the northernmost Kara Sea at 79.5N, the temperature has remained above freezing since July 16 (47 days as of September 2). Last summer, the longest freeze-free period there was 11 days and in summer 2023 the longest was only 4 days. 

On the Pacific side of the North Pole, ice loss in the Beaufort Sea increased during August, but plenty of ice remained at the end of the month in the eastern part of the basin. The Northern Sea Route, along the north coast of Russia, was open to most vessels by late August. The Northwest Passage, connecting Canadian waters with the Bering Strait, was close to being open for non ice-hardened traffic, but mobile areas of higher concentration ice persisted at the end of August in Amundsen Gulf, the southeastern-most portion of Beaufort Sea.

[FPizz]

[ORH_wxman]

We've potentially reached the extent minimum on Jaxa (4.55 mil sq km on 9/8). We're about 50k above that now. We'll see if there are enough drops in the coming week to offset gains. If we have indeed reached the extent minimum, it would rank 14th lowest. 

 

Area is even murkier...we're only about 10k above the min of 2.70 million sq km. We're currently 5th lowest for area. We'd need to drop below 2.63 million sq km to reach 4th lowest. 

[FPizz]

2 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

We've potentially reached the extent minimum on Jaxa (4.55 mil sq km on 9/8). We're about 50k above that now. We'll see if there are enough drops in the coming week to offset gains. If we have indeed reached the extent minimum, it would rank 14th lowest. 

 

Area is even murkier...we're only about 10k above the min of 2.70 million sq km. We're currently 5th lowest for area. We'd need to drop below 2.63 million sq km to reach 4th lowest. 

This is probably a dumb question.  With area a little better, can that lead to more extent next season, or is there not really a correlation 

[bluewave]

The volume is close to the lowest on record for this time of year since the ice is so thin due to the record MYI melt over the years. This allows the big disparity between extent and area. As the concentration is also near record lows.
 

 

Zack Labe

 

‪@zacklabe.com‬

 

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⚠️ While extent will not be setting any annual minimum records this year, the average thickness of #Arctic sea ice is actually at historic lows for this time of year (in the dataset by PIOMAS). Thinner ice is younger and usually more fragile. More graphics of volume: zacklabe.com/arctic-sea-i...

 

ALT

September 10, 2025 at 8:07 AM

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