March 21, 2024:  The sea ice has decreased this week at a small rate of 0.61% (as opposed to last week’s increase rate of 1.28%), from the level on 03/14/2024 of 14.976 M km² to 14.885 M km² for this week. Perhaps this is now the change to the sea ice melt season we have been waiting for.  As an aside, the current sea ice extent is still about on par with the 1991-2020 long term average.

The negative sea ice anomaly this week was -0.111 M km² on 03/21/2024, a bit more anomalously negative than the anomaly of -0.0997 M km² on 03/14/2024.