November 2025 Arctic Sea Ice Status
Ice extent back into record low territory
Sea ice growth in the Arctic typically kicks into high gear in November as the polar night deepens. By the end of the month, there is no significant solar heating north of 65°N, so winds, cloud cover (or lack thereof), the underlying ocean water temperatures and of course near surface air temperature are important factors in sea ice expansion.
Sea ice extent
At the end of November 2025, total Arctic sea ice extent was the lowest of record for this time of year in all the major analyses (NSIDC, JAXA, OSI SAF and MASIE), slightly lower than in 2016. Based on the NSIDC Sea Ice Index version 4 (Fig. 1), this is the first time since early July that the daily ice extent has been at the lowest in the satellite era (since late 1978).
As has been the case for most of 2025, the lack of ice was most pronounced across the Atlantic-side Arctic (Fig. 2), with the Barents Sea at the lowest extent on record (since 1978) in NSIDC data. Here, the edge of the pack ice was still near 82°N in places. Baffin Bay (between Canada and Greenland) and Hudson Bay (Canada) were also at the lowest ice extent on record for the end of November. On the Pacific side of the North Pole, ice-over is complete for the higher latitude seas except for the Chukchi Sea, which is always the last of the Pacific-side basins to freeze-up due to inflow from the Bering Sea to the south. In the Bering Sea, ice growth in November was typical of most recent Novembers (and well behind usual pre-2002 levels).
Regional Low Sea Ice
Ice extent around Svalbard was at record low levels at the end of November, as it was for several days in mid-August and again in early October (Fig. 3). Ice extent in this region can change rapidly in response to winds pushing the pack ice around.
Weekly ice analysis from the Canadian Ice Service (CIS) provides a good idea of just how extreme the Hudson Bay sea ice coverage is relative to the 1991-2020 baseline (Fig. 4). For the week of November 26, the 1991-2020 median ice coverage of the basin is about 27 percent. The coverage the same week this year was about 2 percent. While the areal delineation of the Hudson Bay region used here is slightly different than that used by NSIDC, the ice coverage for the week of November 26 is also the lowest of record in CIS analysis (since 1981).
Sea ice near Alaska
Late November sea ice extent near Alaska was typical for recent years (Fig. 5). Ice-over of the Chukchi Sea was not quite complete at the end of November, with disconnected areas of open water remaining south of 71°N. Having open water this late in the autumn has been common in the past 20 years but was unusual prior to 2002. In the Bering Sea, sea ice extent at the end of November was unremarkable for the past 15 years but was only half of the pre-2013 median.
Sea ice thickness and volume
Modeled ice thickness (Fig. 6) at the end of November shows ice generally less than 1.5 meters thick except in narrow swath near the coast from northern Greenland southwest into the northern Beaufort Sea, where the older and thicker ice from near the northern Canadian Arctic Archipelago is carried southwest in the clockwise-rotating Beaufort Sea gyre. Thicker ice is also being exported through Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard. The modeled ice volume was at a record low level at the end of November in the DMI system (since 2004), even lower than the same time last year.
Uh oh