February 23, 2023: Over the past week, the sea ice has continued to increase and at only a very slightly higher rate than last week, of 0.41% (yes 0.41%), from the level on 02/16/2023 of 14.317 M km² to 14.376 M km² for this week; so coupled with the progressively slowing down of sea ice growth over the last several weeks, it is possible that we may be approaching the end of the sea ice growth season – that is typically in mid-March, but who knows, it may start a bit sooner. 

The negative sea ice anomaly this week was lower than the anomaly of -0.991 M km² on 02/16/2023 to a greater negative anomaly of -1.041 M km² on 02/23/2023 and so more anomalously negative for this time of year.