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Full catalog/IDBMG4
IDBMG4·v6·dataset

Greenland's bed under the ice (BedMachine)

IceBridge BedMachine Greenland V006
ocean NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 4 netCDF-4GeoTIFF
In plain English

What it measures. A map of what Greenland's land and seafloor look like beneath the ice, including the shape of the bedrock, the ice thickness, and surface elevation.

How it's made. Built by combining measurements of ice flow with the principle of mass conservation, plus multi-beam survey data and aircraft observations from NASA's IceBridge flights.

How & where you'd use it. Essential for modeling how Greenland's ice will flow and melt, and for predicting its contribution to sea-level rise.

What's measured

OCEANS › BATHYMETRY/SEAFLOOR TOPOGRAPHY › BATHYMETRYLAND SURFACE › TOPOGRAPHY › TERRAIN ELEVATION › BED ELEVATIONCLIMATE INDICATORS › CRYOSPHERIC INDICATORS › GLACIAL MEASUREMENTS › GLACIER/ICE SHEET THICKNESSLAND SURFACE › TOPOGRAPHY › TERRAIN ELEVATION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1993-01-01 → 2021-12-31
  • Measured byNASA DC-8 (MCoRDS) · P-3B (MCoRDS)
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • Spatial extent-90, 59, 9, 84
  • FormatsnetCDF-4, GeoTIFF
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Watch sea-surface temperature and marine heatwaves
  • Spot algal blooms and ocean-colour shifts
  • Support fisheries and coastal monitoring
Official description

This data set contains a bed topography and bathymetry map of Greenland based on mass conservation, multi-beam data, and other techniques. It also includes surface elevation and ice thickness data, as well as an ice/ocean/land mask.

Get the data

idbmg4_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="IDBMG4",
    version="6",
    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_CPRD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.