The summer melt season is over, and the Arctic is now gaining ice at a rate of  60,000 km² per day.

In more technical terms, that is  1,000 Manhattans per day, or 250 Petermann Glacier Ice Islands per day. You could also think of it as one new Manhattan of ice forming every minute and a half, or one new Petermann Ice Island every six minutes.

Mark Serreze at NSIDC wrote in 2008 : “As the climate warms, the summer melt season lengthens …”

In 2010, the Arctic sea ice extent maximum occurred on March 31, and the minimum occurred on September 18. That makes the 2010 melt season the shortest in the JAXA record, at 171 days.

The graph below shows the start and end dates of the maximums and minimums since 2003. There is no trend seen in either.