Monthly cloud-free picture mosaics of Greenland (MODIS)

In plain English

What it measures. Monthly clear-view picture mosaics of Greenland's coastline and the edges of its ice sheet, assembled into clean, mostly cloud-free snapshots.

How it's made. Built by compositing many images from the MODIS cameras on the Aqua and Terra satellites into one tidy mosaic per month.

How & where you'd use it. Lets scientists watch Greenland's ice and coast change over time as part of the Greenland Ice Mapping Project.

What's measured

CLIMATE INDICATORS › CRYOSPHERIC INDICATORS › ICE EDGESCRYOSPHERE › GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS › ICE SHEETS › SURFACE MORPHOLOGY

Coverage & cadence

Time span2008-03-01 → 2016-09-30
Measured byAqua (MODIS) · Terra (MODIS)
Processing levelLevel 1B
Spatial extent-109, 57, 11, 85
FormatsGeoTIFF
StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
Feed weather and air-quality analysis

Official description

This data set, part of the NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) program, consists of monthly image mosaics of the Greenland coastline and ice sheet periphery constructed from composited MODIS imagery. See <a href="http://nsidc.org/data/measures/gimp">Greenland Ice Mapping Project (GIMP)</a> for related data.

Get the data

nsidc-0724_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="NSIDC-0724",
    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