Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/IceFraction_WaterBodies_ACP_AK_2451
IceFraction_WaterBodies_ACP_AK_2451·v1·dataset

How icy small Arctic lakes and ponds are (2017-2023)

ABoVE: Ice Fraction of Small Water Bodies in the Arctic Coastal Plain, 2017-2023
hydrosphere NASA ORNL_CLOUD Level 3 COG
In plain English

What it measures. For small Arctic lakes and ponds in Alaska's coastal plain, this shows what fraction of each was covered by ice, summarized in 1 km grid cells about every six days from 2017 to 2023.

How it's made. Developed from Sentinel-1 radar imagery combined with surface texture and temperature data, which works even through clouds and darkness.

How & where you'd use it. Lets researchers track how lake and pond ice is changing in the warming Arctic, with bearing on local ecosystems, water flow, and the carbon cycle.

What's measured

TERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SURFACE WATER › SURFACE WATER FEATURESCLIMATE INDICATORS › CRYOSPHERIC INDICATORS › ICE EXTENTBIOSPHERE › ECOSYSTEMS › FRESHWATER ECOSYSTEMS › LAKE/POND

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2017-01-05 → 2023-12-28
  • Measured bySentinel-2B (Sentinel-2 MSI) · Sentinel-1B (SENTINEL-1 C-SAR) · Sentinel-2A (Sentinel-2 MSI) · Sentinel-1A (SENTINEL-1 C-SAR)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-164.431, 68.8998, -140.188, 71.356
  • FormatsCOG
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Follow rainfall, floods and surface-water extent
  • Track soil moisture and the onset of drought
  • Monitor lakes, rivers and groundwater storage
Official description

This dataset contains ice fraction data at 1-km spatial resolution and approximately 6-day temporal resolution for small water bodies (900 m2 to 25 km2) across the Arctic Coastal Plain of Alaska (ACP) from 2017 to 2023. The data were developed using Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery, texture features, and temperature data. Ice fraction is summarized for 1-km grid cells. Ice cover of water bodies in the northern high latitudes (NHL) is highly sensitive to the changing climate, and its dynamics exert substantial impacts on the NHL ecosystems, hydrological processes, and carbon cycle. Compared with the Google Dynamic World (DW) product derived from Sentinel-2 observations, this dataset shows high consistency with DW (R =0.91, RMSE = 0.19) while having enhanced temporal coverage due to fewer constraints from solar illumination, cloud cover, and atmospheric conditions.

Get the data

icefraction_waterbodies_acp_ak_2451_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="IceFraction_WaterBodies_ACP_AK_2451",
    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 ORNL_CLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.