How thick the ice is, by radar (IceBridge HiCARS 2)

In plain English

What it measures. Measurements of how thick Antarctic ice is, plus the elevation of the ice surface, the bedrock beneath it, and the strength of the radar echo.

How it's made. Collected by the HiCARS airborne radar sounder flown on aircraft over Antarctica during the ICECAP project, with the raw radar returns turned into geolocated thickness values.

How & where you'd use it. Supports studies of the Antarctic ice sheet, including how it sits on the land below and how it may change over time.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › TOPOGRAPHY › TERRAIN ELEVATION › BED ELEVATIONCRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › ICE DEPTH/THICKNESSCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › ICE DEPTH/THICKNESSLAND SURFACE › TOPOGRAPHY › TERRAIN ELEVATION

Coverage & cadence

Time span2010-12-05 → 2013-01-20
Measured byBT-67 (HiCARS2) · DHC-6 (HiCARS2)
Processing levelLevel 2
Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, -53
FormatsXML, ASCII
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 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 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

ir2hi2_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="IR2HI2",
    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