Ice-penetrating radar echoes from a plane (HiCARS 2)

In plain English

What it measures. Profiles of how strongly radar echoes bounce back from beneath Antarctica's ice, recording the strength of the returning signal along flight paths.

How it's made. Collected by an ice-penetrating radar instrument (HiCARS 2) flown aboard research aircraft during the ICECAP project, supported in part by NASA's Operation IceBridge.

How & where you'd use it. A relatively raw radar product used by glaciologists to map the structure and thickness of Antarctic ice and what lies beneath it.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › SENSOR CHARACTERISTICS › PHASE AND AMPLITUDESPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › RADAR › RETURN POWER

Coverage & cadence

Time span2010-10-28 → 2013-01-25
Measured byBT-67 (HiCARS2) · DHC-6 (HiCARS2)
Processing levelLevel 1B
Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, -53
FormatsnetCDF-3, PDF
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 Antarctica radar sounder echo strength profiles from the Hi-Capability Radar Sounder (HiCARS) Version 2 instrument. The data were collected by scientists working on the Investigating the Cryospheric Evolution of the Central Antarctic Plate (ICECAP) project, which was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) with additional support from NASA Operation IceBridge.

Get the data

ir2hi1b_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="IR2HI1B",
    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