{"id":7574,"date":"2026-03-30T18:34:05","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T18:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iccinet.org\/?p=7574"},"modified":"2026-03-30T19:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T19:10:13","slug":"record-low-2026-arctic-sea-ice-maximum-why-its-essentially-a-tie-with-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iccinet.org\/zh\/record-low-2026-arctic-sea-ice-maximum-why-its-essentially-a-tie-with-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"2026\u5e74\u5317\u6781\u6d77\u51b0\u6700\u5927\u503c\u521b\u7eaa\u5f55\u65b0\u4f4e\uff1a\u4e3a\u4f55\u4e0e2025\u5e74\u57fa\u672c\u201c\u6253\u5e73\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NSIDC and NASA&#8217;s Earth Observatory, 27 March 2026<\/p>\n<p>Arctic sea ice has spread to its greatest area or &#8220;maximum extent&#8221; for 2026, as occurs each year around the spring equinox (March 20-21), when the sun has returned to the entire Arctic Ocean and sea ice stop its winter growth and begins the melt season; reaching its small area or &#8220;minimum extent&#8221; in September-October before freezing and spreading again in winter.<\/p>\n<p>This year\u2019s maximum appears to have occurred on March 15, when extent reached 14.29 million square kilometers. This is the smallest maximum in the 48-year satellite record, falling about 20,000 square kilometers lower than 2025&#8217;s record-low level. The 2025 sea ice extent mostly ran lower than 2026; however a slight growth spurt occurred last year just before the 2025 maximum was reached a week later than that of 2026, around March 22, 2025; rising just slightly above the March 15, 2026 level (see figure below).<\/p>\n<p>The margin of error for these satellite records however is 30,000 square kilometers, so this year&#8217;s 20,000 square kilometers lower maximum extent is within this margin, meaning that the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has declared 2025 and 2026 statistically &#8220;tied&#8221; for this troubling record-low: yet another sign of the growing negative impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the Arctic cryosphere.<\/p>\n<p>As reported earlier, along with the record-low overall extent, researchers documented notably thinner Arctic sea ice this year, especially in the Barents Sea northeast of Greenland. NSIDC also observed that this year&#8217;s winter record low is 1.36 million square kilometers below the 1981-2010 average, an area of sea ice loss equivalent to twice the size of Texas.<\/p>\n<p><strong>NSIDC Interactive Arctic Sea Ice Graph<\/strong><\/p>\n\t<div class=\"img has-hover x md-x lg-x y md-y lg-y\" id=\"image_1499254412\">\n\t\t<a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/nsidc.org\/sea-ice-today\/sea-ice-tools\/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" >\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"img-inner dark\" >\n\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1020\" height=\"803\" src=\"https:\/\/iccinet.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/arctic-sea-ice-extent-1.jpeg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\t\t\n<style>\n#image_1499254412 {\n  width: 100%;\n}\n<\/style>\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n<p><em>Description<\/em>: 2026 Arctic sea ice extent in light blue; 2025 extent in dark green; and 2012 (lowest summer minimum Arctic sea ice extent) in red dashes. Grey highlights indicate median extent for 1981-2010.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nsidc.org\/news-analyses\/news-stories\/arctic-sea-ice-record-low-maximum-strikes-again\">NSIDC Summary<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/nationaltoday.com\/us\/co\/boulder\/news\/2026\/03\/27\/arctic-winter-sea-ice-matches-record-low-say-nasa-nsidc\/\">News Coverage<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/nsidc.org\/sea-ice-today\/sea-ice-tools\/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph\">NSIDC Interactive Arctic Sea Ice Graph<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NSIDC and NASA&#8217;s Earth Observatory, 27 March 2026 Arctic sea ice has spread to its greatest area or &#8220;maximum extent&#8221; for 2026, as occurs each year around the spring equinox (March 20-21), when the sun has returned to the entire Arctic Ocean and sea ice stop its winter growth and begins the melt season; reaching [&#8230;]\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"no","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cryosphere-capsules"],"modified_by":"Pam Pearson","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iccinet.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iccinet.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iccinet.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iccinet.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iccinet.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7574"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/iccinet.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7591,"href":"https:\/\/iccinet.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7574\/revisions\/7591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iccinet.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iccinet.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iccinet.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}