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Full catalog/AE_DySno
AE_DySno·v2·dataset

How much water is locked in snow (Aqua, daily)

AMSR-E/Aqua Daily L3 Global Snow Water Equivalent EASE-Grids V002
hydrosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 HDF-EOS2
In plain English

What it measures. Tells you how much water is stored in the snow on the ground, expressed as the depth of water you'd get if all that snow melted. It also flags how reliable each measurement is.

How it's made. Built from microwave readings by the AMSR-E instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite, processed into daily maps laid out on 25 km grids for the northern and southern halves of the globe.

How & where you'd use it. Helps track how much water is locked up in snowpack, which matters for water supply forecasts, flood planning, and climate studies.

What's measured

TERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › SNOW WATER EQUIVALENTCRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › SNOW WATER EQUIVALENT

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-06-19 → 2011-10-03
  • Measured byAQUA (AMSR-E)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsHDF-EOS2
  • 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

These Level-3 Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) data sets contain SWE data and quality assurance flags mapped to Northern and Southern Hemisphere 25 km Equal-Area Scalable Earth Grids (EASE-Grids).

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AE_DySno",
    version="2",
    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 NSIDC_CPRD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.