Arctic sea ice hit its annual minimum on September 12, covering 4.6 million square kilometers (1.78 million square miles). That ties for the 10th-lowest summer minimum since satellites began tracking the ice in October 1978, matching 2008, 2010 and 2025.
NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder released the data. Continuous measurements started with NASA's Nimbus-7 satellite.
Two decades at the bottom
The 20 lowest summer minimums on record all fell in the past 20 years, from 2007 through 2026.
"We've plateaued, but we're still low relative to the earlier part of the record," says Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at NSIDC.
Linette Boisvert, a sea ice scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, says increased cloud cover in recent decades has helped keep the September extent relatively stable. The clouds block part of the incoming sunlight and slow further melting.
Different in the south
Sea ice around Antarctica shrank unusually in August, losing about 300,000 square kilometers (116,000 square miles) over six days, before it started growing again. Scientists attribute the drop to weather that compressed the ice, not to a long-term trend.
