Arctic sea ice has likely reached its seasonal maximum. On March 22, sea ice extent reached 14.33 million square kilometers (5.53 square miles). The ice extent has been trending downwards since, suggesting that we are now in the sea ice melt season (see the corresponding update on the NSIDC “sea ice today” page).
The 2025 seasonal maximum extent is the lowest in the satellite record starting in 1979. The chart below shows the evolution of sea ice extent around the seasonal peak for the ten years with the lowest maxima, which all occurred since 2006. Sea ice extent has been at or near record low levels since December. The Sea of Okhotsk in particular had much lower than average sea ice extent for much of the season, impacting the Arctic-wide statistics. Sea ice in the Bering Sea was also slow to grow and substantially below average extent for most of the season, but growth picked up in late February and March. This contributed to the relatively late date of the maximum this year.
In the time series on the right shows the annual maximum sea ice extent since 1979 in Million square kilometres. A steep downward trend is clearly apparent. Maximum sea ice extent below 15 M km2 was unheard of prior to 2005 and has since occurred repeatedly. The 2025 maximum of 14.33 M km2 is close to the similarly low values of 2017 and 2018.
