How thick the ice sheet is, from airborne radar (IceBridge)

In plain English

What it measures. How thick the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are, along with the elevation of the ice surface and the depth of the ice bottom, measured along flight paths.

How it's made. Collected by a radar instrument flown on research aircraft during NASA's Operation IceBridge survey campaigns, which peered through the ice from above.

How & where you'd use it. Helps scientists understand how much ice the polar regions hold and how it is changing, key for projecting future sea level rise.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS › GLACIER ELEVATION/ICE SHEET ELEVATIONCRYOSPHERE › GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS › GLACIER THICKNESS/ICE SHEET THICKNESS

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 2
Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, -57
FormatsCSV
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 depth sounder measurements of ice elevation, ice surface, ice bottom, and ice thickness for Greenland and Antarctica taken from the Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder (MCoRDS). The data were collected as part of Operation IceBridge funded aircraft survey campaigns.

Get the data

irmcr2_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="IRMCR2",
    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.

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 MCoRDS L2 Ice Thickness, Version 1 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
IceBridge MCoRDS Parameter Spreadsheet VIEW RELATED INFORMATION