Winter is coming, and North Pole is about to reach to its coldest time. The ice extent will be very noticeable, and it can reflect the climate change when we compare the data over the range.

As temperature drops, the Oceanic seawater gets frozen and extends in size as ice. In the polar area where the temperature can drop to extremely low temperature, the daily changing in the size of the extent can be observable . MASIE-NH https://nsidc.org/data/masie,stands for the Multisensor Analyzed Sea Ice Extent – Northern Hemisphere, is operated by National Ice Center (NIC) in cooperation with the NOAA and U.S Navy . Unlike Sea Ice Index(SII) that only use passive microwave data to give graphical view of the ice extent, MASIE uses data from the Interactive Multisensor Snow and Ice Mapping System(IMS) which also relies on visible imagery with higher degree of resolution(4km instead of 10km) so the ice edge would probably be more accurate.

MASIE divides the region into sixteen pieces that covers furthest to Russia and Canada for people to see the difference. The area marked as white is where the ice is extended. Time series plot on yearly basis is also provided on https://nsidc.org/data/masie/masie_plots.Not surprisingly, the extent is decreasing in speed and getting later for the event to start every year during pre-winter time, such phenomenon should more or less bring up further questions and researches towards the relationship between ice extent and climate change.