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The Arctic sea ice is currently below the levels seen in 2022 but clearly above the record minimum from 2012. Every September, the Arctic sea-ice extent reaches its annual minimum. On 7 September the

This year, the minimum Arctic sea-ice extent, at 4.33 million km², was most probably reached on 15 September (Figure 1), putting it at 7 th place in the sequence of minima since 1979. The sea ice had

Research aircraft from the Alfred Wegener Institute have been surveying the ice-covered Arctic Ocean for 30 years. The immense effort of the past 52 expeditions has paid off: 40,000 km of measurement

This year, sea-ice development in the Antarctic is progressing extremely slowly and, after May, once again reached a record-low monthly sea-ice extent in June. At 11.23 million km², the monthly mean s

Relevance of melt ponds In the Arctic summer, the sea ice melts due to rising temperatures and constant sunlight. When it does, meltwater can gather in pools on the surface, known as melt ponds. These

Sea ice cores from the MOSAiC expedition (2019-2020) are one of the treasures that were brought back to Bremerhaven at the end of the year-long Arctic drift in October 2020. Now, a group of scientists

The further sea-ice retreat will chiefly depend on the ocean temperatures and on wind patterns, which can either condense or disperse the sea ice. As the summer draws to a close, the surface of the ce

95Focus ice DriftStory 10 How alike the two pictures are: as AWI sea-ice physicist Dr Thomas Krumpen flies over the scattered remains of what was once the MOSAiC floe and many of its neighbouring f

The seasonal Arctic sea-ice retreat was quite rapid in the first week of July but slowed during the rest of the month (see Fig.1). The mean extent for July 2021 was 7.72 million km 2 . As such, it was

After a two-year break, this year experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) were able to return to Station Nord in northeast Greenland, to resume