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Full catalog/IRMCR1B
IRMCR1B·v2·dataset

Raw airborne radar echoes over ice (IceBridge MCoRDS)

IceBridge MCoRDS L1B Geolocated Radar Echo Strength Profiles V002
land NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 1B netCDF-4JPEG
In plain English

What it measures. Raw radar echo recordings (echograms) collected over land ice and sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic, showing how the radar signal returns from below the surface.

How it's made. Gathered by the MCoRDS radar instrument flown on a variety of research aircraft, at an early processing stage with locations attached.

How & where you'd use it. A building-block input for studying ice thickness and structure; typically used to create higher-level ice products rather than read directly.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › RADAR › RADAR IMAGERYOCEANS › SEA ICE › SEA ICE ELEVATIONCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › SEA ICE ELEVATION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2009-10-16 → 2019-11-20
  • Measured byBT-67 (MCoRDS) · C-130 (MCoRDS) · DC-8 (MCoRDS) · G-V (MCoRDS) · NASA DC-8 (MCoRDS) · NOAA Twin Otter (MCoRDS) · P-3B (MCoRDS) · WP-3D ORION (MCoRDS)
  • Processing levelLevel 1B
  • Spatial extent-100.2, 59, 28.5, 83.1
  • FormatsnetCDF-4, 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 radar echograms taken from the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) ultra Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder (MCoRDS) over land and sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic.

Get the data

irmcr1b_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="IRMCR1B",
    version="2",
    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.