Decades ago, the majority of the Arctic’s winter ice pack was made up of thick, perennial ice. Today, very old ice is extremely rare. This animation tracks the relative amount of ice of different ages from 1990 through early November 2016. Seasonal ice is darkest blue. Ice that is 9 or more years old is white.
Credit: NOAA, Arctic sea ice growing younger, thinner, originally published in NOAAClimate, 2016 (CC-BY-SA 4.0)
Video produced by the NOAA Climate.gov team, based on NOAA/NASA satellite data provided by Mark Tschudi. Narration by Deke Arndt, NCEI. Video produced by the Climate.gov team in cooperation with climate and Earth scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies and institutions.
