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Full catalog/AE_SI12
AE_SI12·v4·dataset

Sea ice cover and snow depth on the ice (Aqua, daily, 12.5 km)

AMSR-E/Aqua Daily L3 12.5 km Brightness Temperature, Sea Ice Concentration, & Snow Depth Polar Grids V004
land NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 HDF-EOS5
In plain English

What it measures. Daily polar maps of how much of the sea surface is covered by ice, how deep the snow sitting on that ice is, and the underlying microwave signal (how the surface looks to the sensor at four radio frequencies).

How it's made. Derived from the AMSR-E microwave instrument on the Aqua satellite, gridded daily at 12.5 km over both the Arctic and Antarctic, with sea-ice amounts calculated by an established algorithm.

How & where you'd use it. Used to monitor the changing extent of sea ice and snow cover at the poles, important for tracking climate change and polar conditions.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › MICROWAVE › BRIGHTNESS TEMPERATURECRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › SEA ICE CONCENTRATIONCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › SNOW DEPTH

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-06-01 → 2011-10-04
  • Measured byAqua (AMSR-E)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, 30.98, 180, 90
  • FormatsHDF-EOS5
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

This data set (AE_SI12) reports average daily, 12.5 km resolution, horizontally and vertically polarized brightness temperatures (Tb) at four frequencies—18.7 GHz, 23.8 GHz, 36.5 GHz and 89.0 GHz. It also reports: daily sea ice concentrations derived with the Enhanced NASA Team (NT2) algorithm; daily sea ice concentration differences between NT2 and the legacy AMSR Basic Bootstrap Algorithm (BBA); and daily snow depths over sea ice. Data are provided on Northern and Southern Hemisphere, polar stereographic grids. These data are derived from observations acquired by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E).

Get the data

ae_si12_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AE_SI12",
    version="4",
    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.