How fast Greenland's ice sheet flows (multi-year map) — NSIDC-0670

In plain English

What it measures. How fast and in which direction Greenland's ice sheet is moving, shown as a single map blending several years of observations.

How it's made. Stitched together from radar (InSAR and SAR) and Landsat 8 optical imagery, using the way features shift between images to measure ice flow speed.

How & where you'd use it. Helps scientists understand how Greenland's ice is flowing toward the sea, a key factor in sea-level rise and ice-sheet health.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › ICE VELOCITY

Coverage & cadence

Time span1995-12-01 → 2015-10-31
Measured byALOS (PALSAR) · ERS-1 (SAR) · ERS-2 (SAR) · LANDSAT-8 (OLI) · RADARSAT-1 (SAR) · RADARSAT-2 (SAR) · TSX (SAR)
Processing levelLevel 3
Spatial extent-75, 60, -14, 83
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, contains a multi-year ice-sheet-wide velocity mosaic for Greenland, derived from Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), and Landsat 8 optical imagery data. See <a href="http://nsidc.org/data/measures/gimp">Greenland Ice Mapping Project (GIMP)</a> for related data.

Get the data

nsidc-0670_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="NSIDC-0670",
    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.

What's measured

Coverage & cadence

What you can do with it

Get the data

Official links