About these plots - Monthly Southern Hemisphere (Antarctic) sea ice concentration and extent maps:
These plots are of monthly Southern Hemisphere sea ice concentrations, concentration anomalies and sea ice extent, extending back to November 1978. Current monthly maps are updated daily (although there must be at least 15 days of data to form an image). Climatology contours are for the period 1979-2007 and based on having sea ice present on at least 50% of the days in the month (see the GSFC monthly sea ice concentration climatology maps (1979-2007)). Data are from the National Snow and Ice Data Center and are based on concentrations from Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I Passive Microwave Data.
