At the World Economic Forum this week in Davos, Switzerland, the young climate change activist Greta Thunberg had stern words for the world’s most powerful people. Citing the work of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, she chided the attendees for doing “basically nothing” to confront the climate crisis.

“I know you don’t want to talk about this,” she said. “But I assure you I will keep repeating these numbers until you do.”

The numbers coming out of the Arctic, one of the world’s best Petri dishes for studying climate change, bear repeating. As recently as the mid-1980’s, according to Scientific American, thick ice—more than four years old—covered one-third of the Arctic. Today, it accounts for just over one percent of the area. The rest of the ice is younger and thinner, and therefore more vulnerable to melting during the summer months.

If the numbers are clear, this map, which graphically depicts the decline of Arctic sea ice from 1984 to the present, is even clearer.

This animated map was made using Esri's ArcGIS Pro, GDAL, Cinema 4D, Redshift, and Adobe After Effects. Please visit http://ow.ly/fm2950xgu0B for more information about ArcGIS Pro.

Data Sources:

Tschudi, M., W. N. Meier, J. S. Stewart, C. Fowler, and J. Maslanik. 2019. EASE-Grid Sea Ice Age, Version 4. [Indicate subset used]. Boulder, Colorado USA. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. doi: https://doi.org/10.5067/UTAV7490FEPB

Tschudi, M., W. N. Meier, and J. S. Stewart. 2019. Quicklook Arctic Weekly EASE-Grid Sea Ice Age, Version 1. [Indicate subset used]. Boulder, Colorado USA. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. doi: https://doi.org/10.5067/2XXGZY3DUGNQ

Music: Singularity by ANBR

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