How is the Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice Doing This Year?

There’s a website I frequent from the National Snow and Ice Data Center which has some great current and historical information about the Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland ice coverage. This organization’s research and scientific data management activities are supported by NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They receive other funding via contracts, grants and other agencies.
The center itself is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, I find the information very well presented and easy to understand. The statistics and images I used for this blog entry come from that website.
We hear a lot of chatter about global sea ice, mostly in the arctic region because that’s where the ice has declined over the past several decades. During the past 12 months it’s been interesting to see how the decline in the ice has slowed and there has been an increase in multi-year ice as well. One year doesn’t buck a trend and it may be but a blip in the overall decline. Nevertheless it’s important to note.
Back on the first day of spring, the ice in the arctic reached its maximum for the year. At 14.91 million square kilometers (5.76 million square miles), this was the fifth lowest maximum in the satellite record which dates back to 1979. While certainly significant, 35 years of data is a very small subset of geological time.



At the other end of the planet during our winter, the Antarctic ice sheet is undergoing its yearly loss of ice. This year, the sea ice reached its annual minimum on February 23, and was the fourth highest Antarctic minimum in the satellite record. You can see on the image below the trend is quite the opposite of what's going on at the top of the planet.


http://www.boston.com/news/weather/weather_wisdom/2014/05/how_is_the_arctic_and_antarcti.html