Trends in Arctic Sea Ice
You just observed how the Arctic sea ice melts down every summer to what scientists call its "minimum" before colder weather begins to cause ice cover to increase. When you look at the minimum sea ice coverage year after year, summer after summer, patterns in Earth’s climate emerge.
Satellite observations in recent years show that the sea ice is receding to alarmingly low levels during the summer melt season. Watch the video to see the dramatic decrease of Arctic sea ice starting in 1979 and leading up to the observed minimum extent in 2015.
| Keyboard Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Space | Pause/Play video playback |
| Enter | Pause/Play video playback |
| m | Mute/Unmute video volume |
| Up and Down arrows | Increase and decrease volume by 10% |
| Right and Left arrows | Seek forward or backward by 5 seconds |
| 0-9 | Fast seek to x% of the video. |
| f | Enter or exit fullscreen. (Note: To exit fullscreen in flash press the Esc key. |
| c | Press c to toggle captions on or off |
Next, explore the data in this interactive graph to see the change in measured sea ice extent for the entire time series from 1979 to 2015. Hover over each data point along the line graph to reveal the area of ice in million square kilometers.
Then click Visualize It to analyze the data.
Take Notes
Based on the outlines you traced and your analysis of the graph, describe in your own words how the Arctic sea ice extent has been changing over time. How does this general trend affect overall ocean temperature?
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