U.S. National Ice Center Arctic Sea Ice Climatologies 1972-2007

U.S. National Ice Center Arctic Sea Ice Charts and Climatologies in Gridded Format provides monthly statistical summaries of Arctic sea ice concentration derived from operational ice charts. The dataset covers a 35-year period from 1972 through 2007, offering median, quartile, and frequency of occurrence values on a 25-km EASE-Grid. This product is superseded by a newer version with data from January 2003 onward.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term trends in Arctic sea ice concentration using monthly median and quartile values.
• Comparing ice coverage frequency across different climatological periods (e.g., 5-year vs. 10-year).
• Validating sea ice models against historical operational chart data in EASE-Grid format.
• Creating visual baselines for Arctic environmental change studies using the provided GIF browse files.

Strengths

• Derived from a 35-year time series (1972-2007) of weekly/biweekly operational ice charts from the U.S. National Ice Center.
• Provides multiple statistical products including median, maximum, minimum, quartiles, and frequency of occurrence.
• Data is available in multiple formats including geospatial (EASE-Grid binary, ArcGIS geodatabase) and visual (GIF).

Limitations

• This dataset is noted as superseded by a newer product (G10033) beginning January 2003.
• Conflicting last update dates exist between sources (2007-12-31 on NASA Earthdata vs. 2026-03-12 on Data.gov).
• Specific row counts, column names, and dataset size are not provided by any source.

Provenance

Source

U.S. National Ice Center (an inter-agency center of NOAA, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Coast Guard).

Collection Method

Climatologies derived from weekly or biweekly operational ice-chart time series.

Time Range

1972 to 2007

Freshness

2026-03-12

Geography

Arctic region