How much water is locked up in snow (5-day, 25 km) — AU_5DSno

In plain English

What it measures. An estimate of how much water is stored in snow on the ground (snow water equivalent), summarized every five days at about 25 km resolution for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

How it's made. Derived from microwave readings of how the snowpack appears to two Japanese-built sensors (AMSR-E on Aqua and AMSR2 on GCOM-W1), with the two instruments' records calibrated to match each other.

How & where you'd use it. Helps with water-supply forecasting, flood and drought planning, and tracking how snow stored across regions changes through the seasons and over years.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › SNOW WATER EQUIVALENT

Coverage & cadence

Time span2002-06-05 → 2011-10-02
Measured byAqua (AMSR-E) · GCOM-W1 (AMSR2)
Processing levelLevel 3
Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
FormatsHDF-EOS5
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 AMSR-E/AMSR2 Unified Level-3 data set provides estimates of the 5-day snow water equivalent (SWE) at 25 km resolution, derived from brightness temperature measurements acquired by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) and AMSR2 instruments. SWE data are provided on the azimuthal 25 km Equal-Area Scalable Earth Grid (EASE-Grid) for both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere. The data were generated from input brightness temperatures which were resampled by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to intercalibrate, or unify, the AMSR-E and AMSR2 missions.

Get the data

au_5dsno_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AU_5DSno",
    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.

Official links

Search and order NASA Earth Science data using spatial and temporal filters. Reformatting, reprojecting, and subsetting options are available for some data sets. GET DATA
Quickly download a few files using a web browser, or access data through a command-line utility such as WGET. GET DATA
Search data by spatial and/or temporal ranges or file name. Choose from various download options, including a Python script. GET DATA
A Python library to search and access NASA Earth science data with just a few lines of code GET DATA
Find more data access options and help resources. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
AMSR-E/AMSR2 Unified L3 Global 5-Day 25 km EASE-Grid Snow Water Equivalent, Version 1 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
AMSR-E Pole Hole VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
AMSR2 Snow Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD) VIEW RELATED INFORMATION