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Full catalog/NSIDC-0775
NSIDC-0775·v1·dataset

How fast glaciers and ice sheets flow (Landsat)

MEaSUREs ITS_LIVE Landsat Image-Pair Glacier and Ice Sheet Surface Velocities V001
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. How fast glaciers and ice sheets are sliding, mapped at 240-meter resolution. It shows the speed and direction of ice movement across land-ice areas worldwide.

How it's made. Produced by tracking how surface features shift between pairs of Landsat satellite images (from Landsat 4 through 8) using an automated feature-tracking method.

How & where you'd use it. Lets scientists see where ice is speeding up or slowing down from 1985 to 2018, though early years have gaps; coverage becomes nearly complete after Landsat 8 launched in 2013.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › ICE VELOCITY

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1982-11-12 → 2019-04-27
  • Measured byLANDSAT-4 (TM) · LANDSAT-5 (TM) · LANDSAT-7 (ETM+) · LANDSAT-8 (OLI)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • 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 NASA's Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) Program, consists of ice velocities at 240 m resolution, generated from Landsat 4, 5, 7, and 8 optical image pairs. Velocities were derived using the autonomous Repeat Image Feature Tracking algorithm (autoRIFT) processing chain. Data are available for all land ice areas larger than 5 square km, spanning the period from 1985 to 2018 (subject to image availability and quality). Data scarcity and/or low radiometric quality are significant limiting factors for many regions during the earlier years of the data record. Annual, global coverage is nearly complete after the 2013 launch of Landsat 8.

Get the data

nsidc-0775_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="NSIDC-0775",
    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.