December 28 2023:  The sea ice has continued to increase, but at a lesser rate of 2.44% (from last week’s growth rate of 4.37%), from the level on 12/21/2023 of 12.606 M km² to 12.921 M km² for this week.

The negative sea ice anomaly evolved from -0.136 M km² on 12/21/2023 to a greater negative anomaly of -0.244 M km² on 12/28/2023, and so is more anomalously negative for this time of year than last week.

In the waters around Antarctica, 2023 has stood out as an extremely low sea ice year, especially during the austral winter. 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 situation in the south now appears to have normalized.