How much sea ice covers the ocean (AMSR-E, daily, 25 km)

In plain English

What it measures. Reports how much of the ocean is covered by sea ice each day, plus the underlying microwave brightness temperatures (how the surface looks to a microwave sensor) at six frequencies, mapped on polar grids at 25 km.

How it's made. Derived from the AMSR-E microwave instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite, with sea ice coverage computed using established ice-detection algorithms.

How & where you'd use it. Supports daily monitoring of polar sea ice extent and long-term studies of how Arctic and Antarctic ice are changing.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › MICROWAVE › BRIGHTNESS TEMPERATURECRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › SEA ICE CONCENTRATION

Coverage & cadence

Time span2002-06-01 → 2011-10-04
Measured byAqua (AMSR-E)
Processing levelLevel 3
Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, -39.23
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_SI25) reports average daily, 25 km resolution, horizontally and vertically polarized brightness temperatures (Tb) at six frequencies—6.9 GHz, 10.7 GHz, 18.7 GHz, 23.8 GHz, 36.5 GHz, and 89.0 GHz—plus sea ice concentrations and sea ice concentration differences between the Enhanced NASA Team (NT2) algorithm and the legacy AMSR Basic Bootstrap Algorithm (BBA). 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) on board the NASA Aqua satellite.

Get the data

ae_si25_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AE_SI25",
    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.

What's measured

Coverage & cadence

What you can do with it

Get the data

Official links