This site shows a circumpolar historical sea ice concentration dataset, from 1850 to the
present. Combining different types of observations—from whaling ship logbooks to
satellite imagery—this provides a long, continuous record of sea ice conditions that
can be studied to assess trends and changes in sea ice distribution and formation.
We’re sorry but this site doesn’t work properly without JavaScript
enabled.
Please enable it to continue. If you have questions or want help accessing this content
through different media, please email us at
uaf-snap-data-tools@alaska.edu.
With JavaScript enabled, this site shows:
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A dynamic circumpolar map of sea ice concentration, with controls to select any month
from 1850 until the present.
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A list of Arctic coastal communities. Picking a community, or clicking on the map, will
produce two different visualizations:
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An interactive chart of sea ice concentration by month over time, where you can
select the months to show.
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A full “tapestry” visualization showing the % sea ice concentration for
every month and year for the selected point.
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Videos showing an animation of the changing sea ice over time, available through
YouTube.
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A downloadable PDF chart showing the changing sea ice as a visualization in a poster
format.
- Data sources and discussion of methodology.
- Links to source data downloads and the data API where this data can be obtained.
Please email us at
uaf-snap-data-tools@alaska.edu with
any questions.