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The Beaufort Gyre is a large wind-driven ocean circulation in the western Arctic Ocean, north of Alaska and Canada. Together with the Transpolar Drift, it is one of the Arctic's two major sea-ice circulation systems. Within the gyre, free-floating sea ice is very mobile and susceptible to winds, drifting in a clockwise direction due to a high-pressure system that fosters anti-cyclonic winds. This allows Arctic sea ice to survive multiple summers and develop into long-lasting multi-year ice. This animation, produced by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, shows the variation in the age of ice in the Arctic at weekly intervals from 1984 to 2019, with darker colours representing younger ice and white indicating ice at least four years old. It illustrates the dramatic decline of older sea ice and its retreat toward the Canadian Arctic, a trend largely attributed to climate change. The Beaufort Gyre also stores vast quantities of freshwater whose release could influence the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and the global climate.Animation credit: NASA