Aerial photos of polar ice, map-aligned — IODMS1B

In plain English

What it measures. These are aerial photographs of polar ice in Greenland and Antarctica, geolocated and corrected so each image lines up accurately with the ground (orthorectified).

How it's made. The pictures were taken by the Digital Mapping System camera flown on aircraft during NASA's Operation IceBridge survey campaigns.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for visually inspecting ice conditions, mapping the surface, and pairing with other airborne instruments to study changing ice sheets.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS › VISIBLE IMAGERY

Coverage & cadence

Time span2009-10-16 → 2018-04-19
Measured byC-130 (DMS) · DC-8 (DMS) · G-V (DMS) · HU-25A (DMS) · HU-25C (DMS) · P-3B (DMS) · WP-3D ORION (DMS)
Processing levelLevel 1B
Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, -53
FormatsGeoTIFF, JPEG
StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time

Official description

This data set contains Level-1B imagery taken from the Digital Mapping System (DMS) over Greenland and Antarctica. The data were collected as part of Operation IceBridge funded aircraft survey campaigns.

Get the data

iodms1b_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="IODMS1B",
    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.

What's measured

Coverage & cadence

What you can do with it

Get the data

Official links