How thick the sea ice is, along the track (ICESat-2) — IS2SITDAT4

In plain English

What it measures. How thick the winter sea ice is across the Arctic Ocean, reported daily along the satellite's track.

How it's made. Derived by combining ICESat-2 laser measurements of how high the ice floats above the water with a model estimate of the snow sitting on top.

How & where you'd use it. Used to monitor Arctic sea ice thickness and volume, a key indicator of climate change.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › FREEBOARDCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › ICE DEPTH/THICKNESSCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › SNOW DEPTH

Coverage & cadence

Time span2018-10-14 → 2022-05-01
Measured byICESat-2 (ATLAS) · MODELS (NOT APPLICABLE)
Processing levelLevel 4
Spatial extent-180, 60, 180, 88
FormatsnetCDF-4
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 reports daily, along-track winter sea ice thickness across the Arctic Ocean. Sea ice thickness is estimated using ATLAS/ICESat-2 L3A Sea Ice Freeboard (ATL10), Version 5 data and NASA Eulerian Snow On Sea Ice Model (NESOSIM) snow loading.

Get the data

is2sitdat4_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="IS2SITDAT4",
    version="001",
    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