Category: Ocean and climate news

Arctic sea ice extent deduced from altimetry shows a lower-than-average surface again.

The updating of the RA-2 altimetry data from Envisat over the Arctic Ocean for the end of summer (for the month September 2011) shows a comparable low record than 2007 : ~4.10 million km² . However, the repartition of ice is different. A region near the Severnaïa Zemlia archipelago off Siberia (between the Kara and Laptev Seas) is now surrounded by open water.

<link fileadmin images applications ice icecoverage_2007_09.png download>	<link fileadmin images applications ice icecoverage_2011_09.png download>
Monthly sea ice coverage averaged in 1°x1° boxes over September 2007 (left) and September 2011 (right) derived from RA-2 data. White area is open water. (Credits CLS).