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Full catalog/ECCO_L4_SEA_ICE_CONC_THICKNESS_LLC0090GRID_DAILY_V4R4
ECCO_L4_SEA_ICE_CONC_THICKNESS_LLC0090GRID_DAILY_V4R4·vV4r4·dataset

Sea-ice and snow cover and thickness, daily (1 degree)

ECCO Sea-Ice and Snow Concentration and Thickness - Daily Mean llc90 Grid (Version 4 Release 4)
cryosphere NASA POCLOUD Level 4 netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Daily maps of how much of the ocean surface is covered by sea ice, how thick that ice and its snow blanket are, and the weight the ice presses down with. Together these describe the state of floating ice on the polar seas.

How it's made. Comes from the ECCO ocean and sea-ice model, a computer reconstruction fitted to satellite and in-water observations, reported on the model's native grid.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for tracking sea-ice conditions and feeding climate and polar research, especially studies of how ice cover is changing.

What's measured

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

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 provides daily-averaged sea-ice and snow concentration, thickness, and pressure loading on the native Lat-Lon-Cap 90 (LLC90) model grid from the ECCO Version 4 Release 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_llc0090grid_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_LLC0090GRID_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.