Antarctic sea ice growing season

The sea ice in the Antarctic is at minimum extent in February and expands through to mid September.

This movie shows the Antarctic sea ice extent from 1 Feb to 25 July 2017. The data come from the DMSP SMMI sensor, and it shows the expansion of the sea ice as winter progresses.

 

For me the stand out feature is how late the sea ice expands in the Bellingshausen Sea. I think this is a feature of the super low sea ice last year, and the amount of time it took to lose the extra heat absorbed by the ocean.

The NSDIC data set shows the sea ice is lower than we've seen before by satellite.

Antarctic sea ice extent to 26 July 2017 from NSIDC.
Antarctic sea ice extent to 26 July 2017 from NSIDC.

Currently the Antarctic sea ice extent is ~450 thousand km2 below 1981-2010 median.

~7-8 weeks of sea ice expansion to go.