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Full catalog/ASO_50M_SWE
ASO_50M_SWE·v1·dataset

How much water is in the snowpack (airborne lidar, 50 m)

ASO L4 Lidar Snow Water Equivalent 50m UTM Grid V001
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 4 GeoTIFF
In plain English

What it measures. Maps of how much water is locked up in the snowpack (snow water equivalent), gridded at 50-meter resolution.

How it's made. Produced by NASA/JPL's Airborne Snow Observatory by combining airborne lidar measurements of snow depth with modeled snow density.

How & where you'd use it. Valuable for water-supply forecasting, reservoir management, and studying mountain snowpack and runoff.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › SNOW WATER EQUIVALENT

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2013-04-03 → 2019-07-16
  • Measured byDHC-6 (Riegl LMS-Q1560) · King Air (Riegl LMS-Q1560)
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • Spatial extent-118.42599, 37.37399, -118.41097, 37.3926
  • FormatsGeoTIFF
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Measure sea ice, snow cover and glaciers
  • Watch ice-sheet elevation change
  • Track freeze/thaw and permafrost
Official description

This data set contains 50 m gridded snow water equivalent (SWE) values collected as part of the NASA/JPL Airborne Snow Observatory (ASO) aircraft survey campaigns. The data were derived from the <a href="https://nsidc.org/data/aso_50m_sd">ASO L4 Lidar Snow Depth 50m UTM Grid</a> data product and from modeled snow density.

Get the data

aso_50m_swe_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ASO_50M_SWE",
    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 NSIDC_CPRD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.