Tracking arctic sea ice started in the 1970s, and in 2012, those levels hit a record low at 1.31 million square miles.
The 2016 Arctic sea ice summertime minimum, reached on September 10, is 911,000 square miles below the 1981-2010 average minimum sea ice extent, shown here as a gold line.
A light winter snow fell on Barrow, Alaska, this week as scientists reported that the ice cover off Barrow's Arctic shores had declined to its second-lowest level in satellite history, tied with 2007.
"It was a stormy, cloudy and fairly cool summer", said ice centre head Mark Serreze. "It's pretty remarkable that this year's sea ice minimum extent ended up the second lowest, after how the melt progressed in June and July", said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
As global average temperatures have reached new highs through 2015 and 2016 - including an ongoing streak of 15 consecutive months of record-breaking temperatures - records have also tumbled for this year's sea ice.
"The trend is clear and ominous", National Center for Atmospheric Research senior scientist Kevin Trenberth said in an email to the Associated Press.
Map of Arctic sea ice extent on 10 September 2016.
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"What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic", Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann said.
"The regional presence of sea ice here makes a big difference for Alaskans and the wildlife that we have that depends on it", Fischbach said. The deepest low occurred in 2012. This means the fragile ice cap - upon which many creatures, including polar bears and walrus rely - is breaking up more and more over summer. But two Arctic cyclones in August appeared to have accelerated melt by stirring up the broken ice.
It was an unusual year for sea ice in the Arctic, Serreze said.
"It is definitely not just September that's losing sea ice". But data from this summer shows the lack of ice is the second smallest summer minimum on record. We know that a lack of sea ice is having a significant impact on the polar bear population. The windy weather saw the formation of several polynas - patches of open water within the sea ice that are very effective factories for producing sea ice.
Between 1981 and 2010, Arctic sea ice lost an average of 8,100 square miles per day during its melting months.
For August, average sea ice extent was the fourth lowest on record, and below the 1981-2010 average across nearly all of the Arctic, except for a small area in the Laptev Sea above Siberia.
Most of what we tend to talk about with Arctic sea ice comes courtesy of satellites since they're the most reliable way to monitor such a remote region.
