Arctic sea ice extent over 1,450 years

Late-summer Arctic sea ice extent in million square kilometers over the last 1450 years (red line), reconstructed from a combination of Arctic ice core, tree ring, and lake sediment data by Kinnard et al. (2011). A 40-year low-pass filter was applied to the data.  The shaded area shows the uncertainty (95% confidence interval), and the blue dashed line shows modern observations.  Arctic sea ice extent is currently lower than at any time in the last 1450 years.  Unfortunately, sea ice is now melting even faster than predicted.


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