Ice thickness from airborne radar (IceBridge HiCARS)
What it measures. Gives the thickness of Antarctic ice along flight lines, plus the height of the ice surface, the depth of the bedrock underneath, and how strongly the radar signal bounced back.
How it's made. Collected by a radar instrument (HiCARS) flown on research aircraft over Antarctica, then processed into geolocated thickness measurements.
How & where you'd use it. Helps scientists map what lies beneath Antarctic ice and track how the ice sheet is changing over time.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2009-01-02 → 2010-12-21
- Measured byBT-67 (HiCARS1) · DHC-6 (HiCARS1)
- Processing levelLevel 2
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, -53
- FormatsXML, ASCII
- 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 ice thickness, surface and bed elevation, and echo strength measurements taken over Antarctica using the Hi-Capability Airborne Radar Sounder (HiCARS) instrument. The data were collected by scientists working on the Investigating the Cryospheric Evolution of the Central Antarctic Plate (ICECAP) project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) with additional support from NASA Operation IceBridge.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="IR1HI2",
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
- IceBridge HiCARS 1 L2 Geolocated Ice Thickness, Version 1 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION