Flushing of multi-year sea ice from the Arctic basin

The image below is a low-resolution reproduction of a sequence of satellite images of Arctic ice this past fall and winter. The sequence runs in a continuous loop from October 01, 2007, to March 15, 2008. A link to the high-resolution video file is provided below.

Note the stream of multi-year ice flowing out of the Arctic basin down the east coast of Greenland at one o’clock in the image. As of the middle of March, most of the basin, including the pole itself, appears to be covered only by seasonal ice.



Interpretation: darkest grey: open water; intermediate grey: seasonal sea ice; lightest grey: multi-year ice.

Source: Koji Shimada of JAMSTEC (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology ). Methodology: AMSR-E 89Ghz data as a proxy of multi year ice.

Thomas Homer-Dixon