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Full catalog/ABoVE_Frac_Open_Water_1362
ABoVE_Frac_Open_Water_1362·v1·dataset

How much of the Arctic land is open water (2002-2015)

ABoVE: Fractional Open Water Cover for Pan-Arctic and ABoVE-Domain Regions, 2002-2015
hydrosphere NASA ORNL_CLOUD Level 3 GeoTIFF
In plain English

What it measures. Maps showing what fraction of each patch of Arctic and boreal land is covered by open water, every 10 days from 2002 to 2015 at about 5 km resolution.

How it's made. Produced from how warm surfaces look to high-frequency microwave sensors (AMSR-E and AMSR2), combined with other satellite inputs including MODIS, since water and land show up differently at these frequencies.

How & where you'd use it. Lets researchers document where and when northern landscapes flood and how water patterns shift in fast-warming Arctic and boreal ecosystems.

What's measured

TERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SURFACE WATER › SURFACE WATER PROCESSES/MEASUREMENTS › TOTAL SURFACE WATERATMOSPHERE › WEATHER EVENTS › DROUGHTSTERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SURFACE WATER › SURFACE WATER PROCESSES/MEASUREMENTS › FLOODSTERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SURFACE WATER › SURFACE WATER PROCESSES/MEASUREMENTS › INUNDATION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-06-20 → 2015-12-31
  • Measured byAqua (AMSR-E, MODIS) · GCOM-W1 (AMSR2) · Terra (MODIS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, 39.383, 180, 90
  • FormatsGeoTIFF
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Follow rainfall, floods and surface-water extent
  • Track soil moisture and the onset of drought
  • Monitor lakes, rivers and groundwater storage
Official description

This data set provides land surface fractional open water cover maps for two overlapping regions: the entire pan-Arctic region (latitude > 45 degrees) and the Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) domain across Alaska and Canada. The data are a 10-day averaged time step at 5-km spatial resolution for the period 2002-2015. Data represent the aerial portion of a grid cell covered by open water. The data were produced using high frequency (89 GHz) brightness temperatures from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) and the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2), with other ancillary inputs from AMSR-E/AMSR2 25-km products and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The resulting data record for fractional water is suitable for documenting open water patterns and inundation dynamics in boreal-Arctic ecosystems experiencing rapid climate change.

Get the data

above_frac_open_water_1362_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ABoVE_Frac_Open_Water_1362",
    version="1",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from ORNL_CLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.