How fast Greenland's ice sheet flows, yearly — NSIDC-0725

In plain English

What it measures. Maps how fast the Greenland Ice Sheet flows each year, as yearly mosaics of ice velocity across the sheet.

How it's made. Derived by tracking surface motion in radar images (TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X, Sentinel-1) and optical images (Landsat 8 and 9).

How & where you'd use it. Reveals where Greenland's ice is speeding up or slowing down, key to estimating how much ice it sheds and its effect on sea level.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › ICE VELOCITY

Coverage & cadence

Time span2014-12-01 → 2023-11-30
Measured byLANDSAT-8 (OLI) · LANDSAT-9 (OLI-2) · Sentinel-1A (C-SAR) · Sentinel-1B (C-SAR) · TDX (SAR) · TSX (X-SAR)
Processing levelLevel 3
Spatial extent-90.9, 58.5, 8.32, 83
FormatsGeoTIFF, JPEG, Shapefile
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 annual ice velocity mosaics for the Greenland Ice Sheet. Velocities are derived from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, obtained by TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X and Sentinel-1A and -1B, and from optical imagery acquired by Landsat 8 and Landsat 9. See <a href="http://nsidc.org/data/measures/gimp">Greenland Ice Mapping Project (GrIMP)</a> for related data.

Get the data

nsidc-0725_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="NSIDC-0725",
    version="5",
    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