With the arrival of December, I thought it would be appropriate to do a post on the Arctic. It is, after all, where Mr. and Mrs. Claus (and their reindeer and elves) live. I’ve generated maps that show the spatial extent of Arctic sea ice as an annual timeseries for both March (winter) and September (summer). These two months usually represent the maximum and minimum extent, respectively, of the Arctic sea ice each year. Because the outlines overlap so much, thus preventing us from seeing the more recent delineations, I’ve also generated animated gifs, which are in the following post.

To emphasize the decline in Arctic sea ice as a function of time, I’ve graphed the areal extents for both months, and included trendlines. Assuming Santa has accepted the reality of climate change, he may need to think about relocating sooner rather than later…

Data source: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/archives.html (FTP: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/)