Arctic sea ice trends are a key indicator of climate change, an obstacle to maritime activities, a factor in habitat loss, and a significant influence on winter time weather in north west Europe.
EOCIS sea ice thickness, volume and mass netcdf products are generated monthly by CPOM from radar altimetry measurements taken from the ESA CryoSAT-2 satellite during the winter months1 (Oct-Apr). You can view or download products here.
Mean Sea ice thickness grows each Arctic winter season from October to April
Shows the trend in Arctic sea ice thickness since 2010 when CryoSat was launched at the start (Oct), middle (Jan), and end (Apr) of the winter season.
EOCIS-SEAICE-L3C-SITHICK-CS2-5KM-202411-fv1.0.nc
Near Real Time (NRT) sea ice thickness data at 2-day latency (preliminary accuracy) is also available from CPOM at
this link
At the end of 2024, sea ice volume was below average in October,
November, and December for the CryoSat-2 record (2010 – present).
In particular, at 13.9 thousand km3, December sea ice volume was the lowest on record,
compared to the 2010-2023 average of 15.3 thousand km3.
November sea ice volume was the third lowest on record, and October the second lowest.
This was driven by a combination of extremely low sea ice extent and below average sea ice thickness. Sea ice extent in December was the lowest on record at 10.6 million km2 compared to the 2010-2023 average of 11.3 million km2.
Average sea ice thickness was 1.3 m compared to the 1.4 m average for December...[continued]
[See full pdf report and previous reports..]
1Sea ice freeboard (and derived thickness) is only reliably measured from satellite radar altimetry during the winter months. During summer, melt ponds can form on the sea ice floes making it difficult for the satellite to differentiate between floes and leads, and hence calculate sea ice freeboard (and subsequently thickness). Measurement during summer months using radar altimetry is an area of active research (Landy et al, 2022) but is not yet operationally processed.