How Much Arctic Ice Have We Lost?

Written By Teacher: Elaine Makarevich

Elaine is a New Jersey educator with 30 years of teaching experience in grades K-6. The earth and the natural world have always been a focus of her life and throughout her career as her students learned critical lessons about their planet when visiting her indoor or outdoor classrooms.

Have you ever found it challenging to teach students about the dramatic changes happening in the Arctic? The loss of Arctic ice is one of the clearest indicators of climate change, but it’s a complex topic that connects to everything from global weather patterns to sea level rise and biodiversity loss. Helping students understand the scale of Arctic ice decline—and how it compares to past periods in Earth's history—can foster critical thinking about the impacts of human activity on the planet. MIT’s analysis of Arctic ice decline offers valuable context to break down this topic for students. For a hands-on way to explore this subject, SubjectToClimate’s Arctic Infographics and Data Lesson helps students analyze real-world data and create infographics, making Arctic changes both engaging and tangible.

Written By: MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative

The MIT Climate Change Engagement Program, a part of MIT Climate HQ, provides the public with nonpartisan, easy-to-understand, and scientifically-grounded information on climate change and its solutions.

Scientists measure Arctic sea ice every year in September, when satellite imaging shows ice coverage at its lowest. Since 1979, when the U.S. government started taking those measurements, Arctic ice has declined by more than 2 million square kilometers.

“It’s a pretty large chunk of ice that is lost,” says Gianluca Meneghello, a research scientist who focuses on Arctic oceanography in MIT’s department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “It’s one of the strongest signals of climate change.”

Satellite measurements are the preferred method of monitoring Arctic sea ice, because pictures taken from space can most accurately capture the size of Arctic sea ice cover and its constant fluctuations. In September of 2022, satellite data showed ice covering 4.67 million square kilometers of the Arctic Ocean, an area more than 11 times the land area of California.