To date since July 1, 2.86 million square kilometers (1.10 million square miles) of sea ice have melted. The ice edge has retreated to well north of the Alaskan and Mackenzie Delta coasts, but it is clear that the southern (Amundsen’s) route through the Northwest Passage is still choked with ice. However, ice is still present along much of the Northern Sea Route, noting of course that Russian ice breakers are quite capable of keeping routes open. Large parts of the Laptev and East Siberian seas are largely ice free, and a large area of fairly low ice concentration extends north of the Laptev Sea. The sea ice concentration image on August 1, 2023, from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) offers a detailed view of Arctic sea ice conditions (Figure1b). While there is speculation that a fundamental change in the Antarctic sea ice system is afoot, there is some evidence from early satellite data that extent may have been similarly low in 1966. By stark contrast, Antarctic sea ice extent remained far below previous record daily lows throughout the month. The July average Arctic sea ice extent of 8.18 million square kilometers (3.16 million square miles) was the twelfth lowest in the satellite record, and 1.29 million square kilometers (498,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 reference period. Sea ice concentration data are from Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) imagery.įor the month of July, Arctic sea ice extent declined at a pace of 93,300 square kilometers (36,000 square miles) per day, near the 1981 to 2010 average of 86,900 square kilometers (33,600 square miles) per day (Figure 1a). This map shows a large opening on August 1, 2023, in the Laptev and East Siberian Seas and extensive open water north of Alaska and the Mackenzie River Delta.
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