Where Greenland's glaciers end, tracked over time — NSIDC-0764

In plain English

What it measures. Map outlines showing where Greenland's glaciers ended (their calving fronts) and their drainage basins, tracked through time from 1972 to 2019.

How it's made. Created from Landsat satellite images using an automated, neural-network-based tool called the Calving Front Machine that traces glacier fronts.

How & where you'd use it. Lets researchers watch how Greenland's glaciers have advanced and retreated over nearly five decades, a key signal of ice-sheet change.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS › GLACIERS › GLACIER TERMINUS

Coverage & cadence

Time span1972-09-06 → 2019-06-25
Measured byLANDSAT-4 (MSS, TM) · LANDSAT-5 (MSS, TM) · LANDSAT-7 (ETM+) · LANDSAT-8 (OLI)
Processing levelLevel 3
Spatial extent-75, 60, -15, 80
FormatsShapefile
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 contains shapefiles of Greenland’s glacial termini and basins for the years 1972 to 2019. These vector data were created from Landsat 1-8 satellite imagery using the Calving Front Machine (CALFIN) an automated processing workflow utilizing neural networks for extracting calving fronts from satellite images of marine-terminating glaciers.

Get the data

nsidc-0764_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="NSIDC-0764",
    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