Happy New Year 2024 (and sorry for the forum being offline some hours) /DM
In 1985, 16% of the ice pack was very old ice, but by March 2017, this ice category only constituted 0.9% of the ice pack. The extent of the oldest ice declined from 2.54 million km2 in March 1985 to 0.13 million km2 in March 2017. The distribution of ice age in March 2017 was similar to that in March of the previous year, although there was a decrease in the oldest ice fractional coverage, from 1.2% in March 2016 to 0.9% in March 2017.The April 2017 thickness anomaly shows below average thicknesses in the multiyear ice region north of the Canadian Archipelago, the Chukchi Sea and the shelf regions of the East Siberian Sea. Above-average thicknesses were observed in the Beaufort Sea and the eastern part of the central Arctic Ocean. The magnitude of these anomalies was generally below 1 meter.