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Full catalog/ECCO_L4_SEA_ICE_CONC_THICKNESS_05DEG_DAILY_V4R4
ECCO_L4_SEA_ICE_CONC_THICKNESS_05DEG_DAILY_V4R4·vV4r4·dataset

Sea-ice and snow cover and thickness, daily (0.5 degree)

ECCO Sea-Ice and Snow Concentration and Thickness - Daily Mean 0.5 Degree (Version 4 Release 4)
cryosphere NASA POCLOUD Level 4 netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Daily maps of how much sea ice and overlying snow cover the ocean and how thick they are.

How it's made. Drawn from the ECCO ocean and sea-ice reconstruction, a model fit to many satellite and in-water observations, then placed on an even half-degree global grid.

How & where you'd use it. Helpful for tracking the state of polar sea ice over time, which matters for climate monitoring, shipping, and understanding how the poles are changing.

What's measured

EARTH SCIENCE SERVICES › MODELS › EARTH SCIENCE REANALYSES/ASSIMILATION MODELSCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › SNOW DEPTHCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › SEA ICE CONCENTRATION › ICE FRACTIONCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › ICE DEPTH/THICKNESSCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › SEA ICE CONCENTRATION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1992-01-01 → 2018-01-01
  • Measured byMODELS · MITgcm
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • 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 dataset contains daily-averaged sea-ice and snow concentration and thickness interpolated to a regular 0.5-degree grid from the ECCO Version 4 revision 4 (V4r4) ocean and sea-ice state estimate. Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) ocean and sea-ice state estimates are dynamically and kinematically-consistent reconstructions of the three-dimensional, time-evolving ocean, sea-ice, and surface atmospheric states. ECCO V4r4 is a free-running solution of the 1-degree global configuration of the MIT general circulation model (MITgcm) that has been fit to observations in a least-squares sense. Observational data constraints used in V4r4 include sea surface height (SSH) from satellite altimeters [ERS-1/2, TOPEX/Poseidon, GFO, ENVISAT, Jason-1,2,3, CryoSat-2, and SARAL/AltiKa]; sea surface temperature (SST) from satellite radiometers [AVHRR], sea surface salinity (SSS) from the Aquarius satellite radiometer/scatterometer, ocean bottom pressure (OBP) from the GRACE satellite gravimeter; sea ice concentration from satellite radiometers [SSM/I and SSMIS], and in-situ ocean temperature and salinity measured with conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) sensors and expendable bathythermographs (XBTs) from several programs [e.g., WOCE, GO-SHIP, Argo, and others] and platforms [e.g.,research vessels, gliders, moorings, ice-tethered profilers, and instrumented pinnipeds]. V4r4 covers the period 1992-01-01T12:00:00 to 2018-01-01T00:00:00.

Get the data

ecco_l4_sea_ice_conc_thickness_05deg_daily_v4r4_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ECCO_L4_SEA_ICE_CONC_THICKNESS_05DEG_DAILY_V4R4",
    version="V4r4",
    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 POCLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.