Alaska Climate Research Center

The Alaska State Climate Center
The Alaska State Climate Center
The Alaska State Climate Center
Home > Arctic Sea Ice > Arctic (and Antarctic!) Sea Ice Extent: August 17, 2023

Arctic (and Antarctic!) Sea Ice Extent: August 17, 2023

August 17 2023:  Over the past week, the sea ice had a decrease, since last week, by a lower rate of 8.65%, from the level on 08/10/2023 of 5.957 M km2 to 5.442 M km2 for this week.

Plot Compiled by: Howard J. Diamond, PhD; Climate Science Program Manager at NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory
Data Source: National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC; https://nsidc.org/).

The negative sea ice anomaly this week was higher than the anomaly of -0.819 M km2 on 08/10/2023 to a greater negative anomaly of -0.906 M km2 on 08/17/2023, and so more anomalously negative for this time of year.

Plot Compiled by: Howard J. Diamond, PhD; Climate Science Program Manager at NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory
Data Source: National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC; https://nsidc.org/).

In the waters around Antarctica, 2023 stands out as an extremely low sea ice year. The record began in 1979 and the sea ice extent this current austral winter season is outside of 6 standard deviations (SD) for the time series. Note that the grey shading in our Arctic sea ice plots (like the one above) is usually two standard deviations, whereas the below plot for Antarctic waters shows six SD. The current situation around Antarctica is a truly extreme deviation from what could be considered normal for the austral sea ice season.

Plot Compiled by: Howard J. Diamond, PhD; Climate Science Program Manager at NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory
Data Source: National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC; https://nsidc.org/).
Plot Compiled by: Howard J. Diamond, PhD; Climate Science Program Manager at NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory
Data Source: National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC; https://nsidc.org/).