How fast Antarctic ice flows, yearly maps — NSIDC-0720

In plain English

What it measures. How fast the Antarctic ice sheet is flowing, mapped year by year at 1-km resolution, showing both speed and direction of ice movement.

How it's made. Built by combining radar imagery from many satellites (using interferometry) with feature-tracking of Landsat-8 optical images, producing annual maps for 2000-2001 and 2005 through 2025.

How & where you'd use it. Tracking ice flow over time shows how Antarctica's glaciers are speeding up or slowing down, a key signal for understanding ice loss and future sea level rise.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › ICE VELOCITY

Coverage & cadence

Time span2000-07-01 → 2001-06-30
Measured byALOS (PALSAR) · ENVISAT (ASAR) · LANDSAT-8 (OLI) · RADARSAT-1 (SAR) · RADARSAT-2 (SAR) · Sentinel-1A (C-SAR) · Sentinel-1B (C-SAR) · TDX (SAR) · TSX (SAR)
Processing levelLevel 3
Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, -60
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, part of the NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) program, consists of annual (1 July to 30 June), 1 km resolution maps of ice component velocities for the Antarctic ice sheet. Data are provided for the year 2000-2001 and for each year from 2005 to 2025. Velocities are derived by applying interferometric analysis techniques to synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data acquired by various satellites and sensors and by feature tracking of optical imagery acquired by Landsat-8. This data set was originally titled "MEaSUREs Annual Antarctic Ice Velocity Maps 2005-2017."

Get the data

nsidc-0720_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="NSIDC-0720",
    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.

Official links

Search and order NASA Earth Science data using spatial and temporal filters. Reformatting, reprojecting, and subsetting options are available for some data sets. GET DATA
Quickly download a few files using a web browser, or access data through a command-line utility such as WGET. GET DATA
Search data by spatial and/or temporal ranges or file name. Choose from various download options, including a Python script. GET DATA
A Python library to search and access NASA Earth science data with just a few lines of code GET DATA
Find more data access options and help resources. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
MEaSUREs Annual Antarctic Ice Velocity Maps, Version 1 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
NSIDC-0720 Instrument Coverage By Year VIEW RELATED INFORMATION