How much water is locked in snow, monthly (25 km)
What it measures. Monthly estimates of snow water equivalent, that is, how much water is held in the snowpack, mapped across both hemispheres on a 25 km grid.
How it's made. Derived from how the snow looks to the AMSR-E and AMSR2 microwave radiometers (on the Aqua and GCOM-W1 satellites), with the two instruments calibrated to match each other.
How & where you'd use it. Useful for tracking snow-stored water for water-supply, hydrology, and climate studies.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2002-06-01 → 2011-09-30
- 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 (L3) data set provides monthly estimates of snow water equivalent (SWE) 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
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="AU_MoSno",
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_CPRDBrowsing 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 Monthly 25 km EASE-Grid Snow Water Equivalent, Version 1 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- AMSR2 Snow Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD) VIEW RELATED INFORMATION