Arctic sea ice maximum, 13th March 2019, satellite image. The Arctic sea ice (white) reaches a maximum around March, at the end of the Arctic winter. This maximum extent for 2019 covered 14.78 million square kilometres, and reflected the downward trend seen in sea ice extent over the last four years. The Arctic's sea ice maximum extent has dropped by an average of 2.8 percent per decade since 1979. The sea ice data for this image is from the AMSR2 (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2) sensor on the Japanese Shizuku satellite.