How fast Greenland's ice flows, every 6-12 days (radar)

In plain English

What it measures. How fast Greenland's ice sheet surface is moving, updated as frequently as every 6 to 12 days across the years 2015 to 2021.

How it's made. Derived from radar images taken by the European Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B satellites, by measuring how surface features shift between passes.

How & where you'd use it. Lets scientists watch short-term changes in how Greenland's ice is flowing, helping track ice loss and its contribution to sea-level rise.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › ICE VELOCITY

Coverage & cadence

Time span2015-01-01 → 2021-02-03
Measured bySentinel-1A (C-SAR) · Sentinel-1B (C-SAR)
Processing levelLevel 3
Spatial extent-75, 60, -14, 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 contains 6 and 12 day surface velocity estimates for the Greenland Ice Sheet and periphery derived from images acquired between 2015–2021 by the European Space Agency (ESA) Copernicus Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B satellites.

Get the data

nsidc-0766_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="NSIDC-0766",
    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