Sea-ice thickness, snow depth and freeboard (IceBridge)

In plain English

What it measures. Sea-ice properties in the polar regions: how much ice sticks up above the water (freeboard), how deep the snow on top is, and how thick the ice is overall.

How it's made. Calculated from several airborne instruments flown during NASA's Operation IceBridge over Greenland and Antarctica, including snow radar and laser mapping.

How & where you'd use it. Helps scientists track sea-ice thickness and snow cover, important indicators of polar climate change and how the ice is responding over time.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › FREEBOARDCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › ICE DEPTH/THICKNESSCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › ICE ROUGHNESSCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › SEA ICE ELEVATIONCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › SNOW DEPTH

Coverage & cadence

Time span2009-03-19 → 2013-04-25
Measured byC-130 (ATM) · DC-8 (ATM, CAMBOT, DMS, Snow Radar) · P-3B (ATM, CAMBOT, DMS, Snow Radar)
Processing levelLevel 4
Spatial extent-180, 60, 180, 90
FormatsXML, CSV
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 derived geophysical data products including sea ice freeboard, snow depth, and sea ice thickness measurements in Greenland and Antarctica retrieved from IceBridge Snow Radar, Digital Mapping System (DMS), Continuous Airborne Mapping By Optical Translator (CAMBOT), and Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) data sets. The data were collected as part of Operation IceBridge funded campaigns.

Get the data

idcsi4_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="IDCSI4",
    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_CPRD

Browsing 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
IceBridge L4 Sea Ice Freeboard, Snow Depth, and Thickness, Version 1 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
IDCSI4 Data Product Manual Version 2 VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
IDCSI4 Mission, Campaign, and Flight-Specific Notes VIEW RELATED INFORMATION