How fast Greenland's ice is sliding, every 3 months — NSIDC-0727

In plain English

What it measures. Maps showing how fast the Greenland Ice Sheet is flowing, updated every three months. Each map captures the speed and direction the ice is sliding across the whole ice sheet.

How it's made. Derived by tracking surface movement in radar images from TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X and Sentinel-1, combined with optical images from Landsat 8 and 9.

How & where you'd use it. Used to monitor how quickly Greenland's glaciers are moving and shedding ice into the ocean, a key signal for sea-level-rise research.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › ICE VELOCITY

Coverage & cadence

Time span2014-12-01 → 2024-11-30
Measured byLANDSAT-8 (OLI) · LANDSAT-9 (OLI-2) · Sentinel-1A (C-SAR) · Sentinel-1B (C-SAR) · TDX (X-SAR) · TSX (X-SAR)
Processing levelLevel 3
Spatial extent-90.9, 58.5, 8.32, 83
FormatsGeoTIFF, JPEG, Shapefile
StatusACTIVE

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 quarterly (three-month interval) ice velocity mosaics for the Greenland Ice Sheet. This data set is 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="https://nsidc.org/grimp">Greenland Ice sheet Mapping Project (GrIMP)</a> for related data.

Get the data

nsidc-0727_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="NSIDC-0727",
    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