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Full catalog/IRMCR3
IRMCR3·v2·dataset

Ice thickness and bed depth from airborne radar (IceBridge)

IceBridge MCoRDS L3 Gridded Ice Thickness, Surface, and Bottom V002
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 PNGASCIIShapefileMAT
In plain English

What it measures. Maps of how thick the ice is over Greenland and Antarctica, along with the height of the ice surface and the depth of the bedrock beneath it.

How it's made. Built from a radar depth sounder (MCoRDS) flown on aircraft during NASA's Operation IceBridge campaigns, with the measurements processed and arranged onto a grid.

How & where you'd use it. Helps scientists understand ice-sheet structure and the land hidden under the ice, which is key for predicting ice flow and sea-level change.

What's measured

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

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2006-01-01 → 2012-12-31
  • Measured byAIRCRAFT (RADAR ECHO SOUNDERS) · DC-8 (ATM, MCoRDS) · P-3B (ATM, MCoRDS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, -53
  • FormatsPNG, ASCII, Shapefile, MAT, CSV
  • 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 products from depth sounder measurements over Greenland and Antarctica taken from the Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder (MCoRDS). The data were collected as part of NASA Operation IceBridge funded campaigns.

Get the data

irmcr3_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="IRMCR3",
    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.