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March 13, 2025 - Swirling Sea Ice between Greenland and Iceland
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Whorls of white stretched along the southeastern Greenland coastline in mid-March 2025, partially filling the Denmark Strait with fast sea ice. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this true-color image on March 11.
Greenland sits at the top of the image, fringed with sea ice, and Iceland is located in the lower right corner. The Denmark Strait separates the two islands. Snow and ice appear bright white while clouds appear dull white, with a more granular appearance. Sea ice clings to the shore of Greenland, but not Iceland.
When Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), spoke to NASA’s Earth Observatory in in late February 2025 he advised that much of this is young “drifting ice” that formed locally in the previous few days. Some of it, he notes, could be older ice from the north that was carried south by the strong East Greenland Current.
In a media release on March 4, the NSIDC reported that the average February 2025 Arctic sea ice extent was 13.75 million square kilometers (5.31 million square miles), the lowest February extent in the 47-year satellite record. That is 220,000 square kilometers (85,000 square miles) below the previous record low February set in 2018. Daily ice growth stalled twice during February, which helped to contribute to low ice conditions and led to overall ice retreat in the Barents Sea. By the end of February, sea ice extent was low nearly everywhere, the exception being the East Greenland Sea (which is north of this image). Extent is far below average in the Labrador Sea and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Image Facts
Satellite:
Terra
Date Acquired: 3/11/2025
Resolutions:
1km (293.6 KB), 500m (781.8 KB), 250m (2 MB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit:
MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
Whorls of white stretched along the southeastern Greenland coastline in mid-March 2025, partially filling the Denmark Strait with fast sea ice. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this true-color image on March 11.
Greenland sits at the top of the image, fringed with sea ice, and Iceland is located in the lower right corner. The Denmark Strait separates the two islands. Snow and ice appear bright white while clouds appear dull white, with a more granular appearance. Sea ice clings to the shore of Greenland, but not Iceland. When Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), spoke to NASA’s Earth Observatory in in late February 2025 he advised that much of this is young “drifting ice” that formed locally in the previous few days. Some of it, he notes, could be older ice from the north that was carried south by the strong East Greenland Current.
In a media release on March 4, the NSIDC reported that the average February 2025 Arctic sea ice extent was 13.75 million square kilometers (5.31 million square miles), the lowest February extent in the 47-year satellite record. That is 220,000 square kilometers (85,000 square miles) below the previous record low February set in 2018. Daily ice growth stalled twice during February, which helped to contribute to low ice conditions and led to overall ice retreat in the Barents Sea. By the end of February, sea ice extent was low nearly everywhere, the exception being the East Greenland Sea (which is north of this image). Extent is far below average in the Labrador Sea and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Image Facts
Satellite:
Terra
Date Acquired: 3/11/2025
Resolutions:
1km (293.6 KB), 500m (781.8 KB), 250m (2 MB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit:
MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
