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Full catalog/RDSISC4
RDSISC4·v1·dataset

Classifying types of sea ice from aerial photos

IceBridge-Related DMS-Derived L4 Sea Ice Surface Cover Classification Images V001
ocean NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 4 TIFF
In plain English

What it measures. Contains images where each area is labeled by the type of sea ice surface it shows, turning aerial photos into classified surface-cover maps.

How it's made. Created by running raw aerial camera imagery from the IceBridge campaign through an open-source sea-ice classification algorithm, with results saved as labeled image files.

How & where you'd use it. Helps researchers study the makeup of sea ice surfaces (such as different ice and open-water categories) from detailed aerial views.

What's measured

OCEANS › SEA ICE › SEA ICE/OCEAN CLASSIFICATIONCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › SEA ICE/OCEAN CLASSIFICATION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2010-03-23 → 2018-04-16
  • Measured byB-200 (DMS) · C-130 (DMS) · DC-8 (DMS) · HU-25A (DMS) · HU-25C (DMS) · P-3B (DMS) · WP-3D ORION (DMS)
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • Spatial extent-180, 60, 180, 90
  • FormatsTIFF
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Watch sea-surface temperature and marine heatwaves
  • Spot algal blooms and ocean-colour shifts
  • Support fisheries and coastal monitoring
Official description

This data set contains reprocessed images depicting labels that indicate the sea ice surface category, created by processing IceBridge DMS L0 Raw Imagery with the Open Source Sea-ice Processing Algorithm. The images are provided as TIFF files (.tif). Additional metadata are provided as CSV text files (.csv), which are available as a single zip file named RDSISC4_metadata.zip. An orthorectified version of this data set is available as IceBridge-Related DMS-Derived L4 Sea Ice Surface Cover Classification Orthorectified Images.

Get the data

rdsisc4_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="RDSISC4",
    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.