January 31, 2025: The Arctic sea ice has had a surprising decrease this week at a rate of 0.28% (as opposed to last week’s increase rate of 1.49%), from the level on 01/23/2025 of 13.494 M km² to 13.454 M km² for this week.  This is probably a temporary anomaly and not a seasonal shift to the melting season. Temperatures across the Arctic have been far above normal this month. It will be interesting to see how the sea ice develops in the coming weeks.

The negative sea ice anomaly this week was higher than the anomaly of -0.7538 M km² on 01/23/2025 to a greater negative anomaly of -1.0153 M km² on 01/30/2025, and so more anomalously negative for this time of year than last week.