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Arctic Sea Ice Forecast

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2020 First report

Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo

Figure１：Predicted sea ice cover on September 10, 2020.
Figure１：Predicted sea ice cover on September 10, 2020.
  1. Minimum ice extent will be about 4.51 million square kilometers.
  2. Sea routes of Russian side will open around August 1, and the Canadian side except for Canadian archipelago will open around July 11.
Figure 2：The interannual change of minimum extent since 2003. Value of 2020 is predicted one.
Figure 2：The interannual change of minimum extent since 2003. Value of 2020 is predicted one.
Figure 3：Animation of predicted Arctic ice extent from the July 1 to the September 20.
Figure 3：Animation of predicted Arctic ice extent from the July 1 to the September 20. Yellow and green lines indicates the ice edge of the same day for 2018 and 2019.
Figure 4：Animation of the daily anomaly of the predicted ice concentration from 2003-2019 mean
Figure 4：Animation of the daily anomaly of the predicted ice concentration from 2003-2019 mean. Red color shows the area of faster ice retreat.

Sea ice extent on September 10 is expected to be 4.51 million square kilometers, which is 4% larger than the last year’s minimum area and 3% smaller than 2018’s minimum.

Ice cover in the Russian coastal side will retreat with nearly same speed as a normal year. Sea routes of the Russian side will open around August 1.

Ice retreat in the Beaufort Sea will be faster than a normal year. Sea routes of the Canadian side except for Canadian archipelago will open around the July 11, which is later than the last year.

Additionally, Figure 5 presents the age of sea ice on April 30 of 2018, 2019 and 2020. Area of old multiyear ice was reduced in the last year and the area is still small in this year. There is a possibility that a large-scale ice retreat will occur in this summer because most of the Arctic Ocean is covered by thin first-year ice.

2018
2019
2020
Figure 5：Map of ice age (in day) on April 30 of 2018, 2019 and 2020. Orange-red colored area shows multiyear ice area older than 400 days.
Multiyear ice area is small in 2019 and 2020.

For this prediction, we used the sea ice data from satellite microwave sensors AMSR-E and AMSR2, and the relationship between the winter ice motion and summer ice concentration (Kimura et al., 2013) In this report, we use the data until April 30. This forecast also consider the long-term trend of sea ice concentration.

Ice prediction map is also available in Arctic Data Archive Systemof National Institute of Polar Research.

Contact

If you have any questions about satellite monitoring of the Arctic Ocean, sea ice forecasting, or the forecasting methods used here, please contact the Sea Ice Information Center（sea_ice@nipr.ac.jp）

The sea ice forecast and its basic research were started in GRENE, continued to ArCS Project, and has been conducted in ArCS II Project since 2020.

Arctic Sea Ice Forecast