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

In plain English

What it measures. How fast the Greenland Ice Sheet and its edges are flowing, refreshed every 6 to 12 days. The maps show the speed and direction the ice is creeping toward the sea.

How it's made. Calculated by tracking how features in radar images from Europe's Sentinel-1 satellites shift between repeat passes over the same areas.

How & where you'd use it. Lets scientists watch glaciers speed up or slow down in near real time, an important clue to how quickly Greenland is losing ice.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › ICE VELOCITY

Coverage & cadence

Time span2015-01-01 → 2024-12-20
Measured bySentinel-1A (C-SAR) · Sentinel-1B (C-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 6 and 12 day surface velocity estimates for the Greenland Ice Sheet and periphery. Velocities are derived from images acquired by the European Space Agency (ESA) Copernicus Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B satellites. See <a href="http://nsidc.org/grimp">Greenland Ice Mapping Project (GrIMP)</a> for related data sets.

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="2",
    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