This animation is comprised of Envisat ASAR mosaics of the Arctic Ocean for 2005, 2006 and 2007 and highlights the changes in sea ice. The ice-free areas appear as dark gray and the sea ice areas as light gray.

The data in each yearly mosaic were acquired between 1 and 11 September by ASAR working in Global Monitoring Mode with a spatial resolution of 1 km.

Note the exceptionally large ice-free area extending from the Siberia coast up to the vicinity of the North Pole in the 2007 mosaic.

Each mosaic contains approximately 200 Envisat images processed by the Earth Observation G-POD (Grid Processing On Demand) operated at ESA/ESRIN. G-POD is a powerful GRID-based environment coupled with large online archives of Earth Observation data products.