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In 2006, NSIDC and Argentine researchers landed on two icebergs calved off the Antarctic Peninsula and installed a battery of science instruments on each. NSIDC then tracked the movement of these icebergs as they drifted northward into warmer waters and broke apart.

The Antarctic Peninsula has had an intense melt season with above average melting persisting through much of February. Saturated snow from a high melt year and low sea ice in Bellingshausen Sea have led to a series of minor calving events on the Wilkins Ice Shelf. Elsewhere in Antarctica, melting was near average.

Arctic sea ice has likely reached its maximum extent for the year, at 14.62 million square kilometers (5.64 million square miles) on March 6, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder. The 2023 maximum is the fifth lowest in the 45-year satellite record. 

As NASA moves their data, including data collections managed and housed at their 12 distributed active archive centers (DAACs), over to the Earthdata Cloud, the organization will lean on Openscapes. To support NASA DAAC researchers during the data migration to the cloud, Openscapes developed the Openscapes Framework, a scalable leadership training and community-building framework which includes three components: engaging DAAC mentors, empowering science research teams, and amplifying open science leaders.

Continuing the trend of recent months, the western United States received significant snowfall in February 2023, helping to improve drought conditions in the West. Despite dominance of a La Niña conditions, current snowpack patterns resemble those characteristic of El Niño years. 

Antarctic sea ice has likely reached its minimum extent for the year, at 1.79 million square kilometers (691,000 square miles) on February 21, 2023, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder. The 2023 minimum is the lowest in the 45-year satellite record.