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-202401-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 beginning of the first quarter of 2024, sea ice volume was above average for the CryoSat-2 record (2010- present), at 19.1 thousand km3. This was likely driven by an unusually high sea extent, which at 13.2 million km2 was one of the highest since 2010, while sea ice thickness for January was the fourth lowest since 2010 at 1.4 m. In February and March of 2024, sea ice volume was below average for the CryoSat-2 record, at 22.1 thousand km3 and 24.4 thousand km3 respectively. Similarly to the start of the year, this can be attributed to below average sea ice thickness. [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.