How much glaciers are thinning, High Mountain Asia
What it measures. Shows how much glaciers in High Mountain Asia have thinned or thickened over time, as maps of elevation change covering roughly 1975-2000 and 2000-2016.
How it's made. Derived by comparing elevation models built from declassified HEXAGON spy-satellite imagery and NASA's ASTER instrument, fitting trends to the changing glacier surface heights.
How & where you'd use it. Lets glaciologists and water-resource scientists measure how fast Himalayan glaciers are losing ice, which matters for downstream water supply and sea level.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span1974-01-01 → 2017-12-31
- Measured byHEXAGON KH-9 (CAMERA) · Terra (ASTER)
- Processing levelLevel 2
- Spatial extent75.4, 27.4, 92.9, 34.4
- FormatsPNG, GeoTIFF
- 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 thickness change mosaics that include approximately 650 Himalayan glaciers between 1975 and 2000, and 1040 Himalayan glaciers between 2000 and 2016. The data were derived from HEXAGON KH-9 and ASTER digital elevation models (DEMs), by fitting robust linear trends to time series of elevation pixels over the glacier surfaces.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="HMA_Glacier_dH_Mosaics",
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
- High Mountain Asia Glacier Thickness Change Mosaics from Multi-Sensor DEMs, Version 1 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION