Arctic sea ice maximum, 6th March 2023, satellite image. The Arctic sea ice (white) reaches a maximum around late February-early March, at the end of the Arctic winter. This maximum extent for 2023 covered 14.88 million square kilometres, making it the fifth lowest yearly maximum extent on record. The Arctic sea ice maximum extent has dropped by an average of 2.6 percent per decade relative to the 1981-2001 average. The sea ice data for this image is from the AMSR2 (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2) sensor on the Japanese Shizuku satellite.