Where Antarctic ice sheet meets the sea — NSIDC-0498

In plain English

What it measures. Maps of Antarctica's grounding lines, the boundary where the ice sheet stops resting on bedrock and begins to float on the ocean.

How it's made. Derived by comparing radar images of the same area over time (differential radar interferometry) from many satellites, covering 1992 through late 2025.

How & where you'd use it. Tracking how grounding lines move is a sensitive measure of ice-sheet stability and potential sea-level rise.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS › GLACIERS › GROUNDING LINE

Coverage & cadence

Time span1992-02-07 → 2025-11-26
Measured byALOS (PALSAR) · COSMO-SKYMED (SAR) · ERS-1 (SAR) · ERS-2 (SAR) · ICEYE (X-SAR) · PAZ (PAZ-SAR) · RADARSAT-1 (SAR) · RADARSAT-2 (SAR) · SENTINEL-1A (C-SAR) · TSX (X-SAR)
Processing levelLevel 3
Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, -60
FormatsShapefile, GeoPackage
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 comprehensive high-resolution mapping of grounding lines in Antarctica from February 1992 through November 2025. The data were derived by applying differential satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry (DInSAR) to SAR data acquired by various space-based platforms. See <a href="https://nsidc.org/data/measures/aiv">Antarctic Ice Sheet Velocity and Mapping Data</a> for related data.

Get the data

nsidc-0498_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="NSIDC-0498",
    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.

What's measured

Coverage & cadence

What you can do with it

Get the data

Official links