June 30th, 2018: Antarctic sea ice extent ***********************
A sluggish June 2018
Arctic sea ice extent declined at a slightly slower-than average pace in June. Despite the slow loss, warm conditions and winds from the south developed a large area of open water in the Laptev Sea.
Overview of conditions:
Arctic sea ice extent for June 2018 averaged 10.7 million square kilometers (4.1 million square miles). This was 1.05 million square kilometers (405,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average and 360,000 square kilometers (139,000 square miles) above the record low June extent set in 2016. This was the fourth lowest June average extent in the satellite record.
Extent at the end of June remained below average in the Chukchi Sea, but because of slow retreat through June in the region, extent in the Chukchi is now closer to average than was the case at the end of May. The Barents Sea and East Siberian Sea also have extents well below average at the end of June. Most of the ice in the Sea of Okhotsk has melted. Ice has been retreating in the west side of Hudson Bay where extent is below average. However, this is countered by above average extent in the eastern side of the bay. Notably, a large area of open water has developed in the Laptev Sea, leading to record low extents in that region during the first half of June
Image courtesy of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, Boulder (https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/). Data source see http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/about-the-data/
