August 18, 2022: over the past week, the sea ice has now decreased by a higher rate from last week of 6.47%, from the level on 08/11/2022 of 6.339 M km² to 5.929 M km² for this week.  We are now about a month out from bottoming out for the year and at this point we are at the highest point of overall sea ice extent in several years, and so it will be interesting to see what goes on over the next few weeks.

The negative sea ice anomaly this week was greater from the anomaly of -1.044 M km² on 08/11/2022 to a more negative anomaly of -1.043 M km² on 08/18/2022 and so more anomalously negative for this time of year.