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Full catalog/NSIDC-0481
NSIDC-0481·v4·dataset

How fast selected Greenland glaciers flow (radar)

MEaSUREs Greenland Ice Velocity: Selected Glacier Site Velocity Maps from InSAR V004
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 GeoTIFFJPEG
In plain English

What it measures. How fast selected major Greenland outlet glaciers are flowing, mapped at specific glacier sites — some of which have changed dramatically over the years.

How it's made. Calculated using radar interferometry from image pairs taken by the German TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X twin satellites, comparing how the surface shifted between passes.

How & where you'd use it. Tracks rapid changes at the fastest-moving Greenland glaciers, complementing ice-sheet-wide velocity maps and helping scientists understand ice loss and sea-level rise.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › ICE VELOCITY

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2008-06-12 → 2023-09-20
  • Measured byTDX (TDX-1) · TSX (X-SAR)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-70, 60, -20, 82
  • FormatsGeoTIFF, JPEG
  • 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, part of the NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) program, provides velocity estimates determined from Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) data for major glacier outlet areas in Greenland, some of which have shown profound velocity changes over the MEaSUREs observation period. The InSAR Selected Glacier Site Velocity Maps are produced from image pairs measured by the German Aerospace Center's (DLR) twin satellites TerraSAR-X / TanDEM-X (TSX / TDX). The measurements in this data set are provided in addition to the ice sheet-wide data from the related data set, <a href="https://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0478">MEaSUREs Greenland Ice Sheet Velocity Map from InSAR Data</a>. See <a href="https://nsidc.org/grimp">Greenland Ice Mapping Project (GrIMP)</a> for more related data.

Get the data

nsidc-0481_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="NSIDC-0481",
    version="4",
    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.