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Satellites witness lowest Arctic ice coverage in history

14 September 2007

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Envisat ASAR mosaic of Arctic Sea for early September 2007

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Envisat ASAR mosaic of the Arctic Ocean for early September 2007, clearly showing the most direct route of the Northwest Passage open (orange line) and the Northeast passage only partially blocked (blue line). The dark grey colour represents the ice-free areas, while green represents areas with sea ice.

Credits: ESA

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This animation is comprised of Envisat ASAR mosaics of the Arctic Ocean for 2005, 2006 and 2007 and highlights the changes in sea ice. The ice-free areas appear as dark gray and the sea ice areas as light gray.

The data in each yearly mosaic were acquired between 1 and 11 September by ASAR working in Global Monitoring Mode with a spatial resolution of 1 km.

Note the exceptionally large ice-free area extending from the Siberia coast up to the vicinity of the North Pole in the 2007 mosaic.

Each mosaic contains approximately 200 Envisat images processed by the Earth Observation G-POD (Grid Processing On Demand) operated at ESA/ESRIN. G-POD is a powerful GRID-based environment coupled with large online archives of Earth Observation data products.

Credits: ESA

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Envisat ASAR image of the McClure Strait in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, acquired on 31 August 2007. The McClure Strait is the most direct route of the Northwest Passage and has been fully open since early August 2007.

Credits: ESA