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SASSIE_ECCO_L4_SEA_ICE_CONC_THICK_VEL_LLC1080GRID_DAILY_V1R1·vV1R1·dataset

Daily Arctic sea-ice and snow cover, thickness, and drift

SASSIE ECCO Sea-Ice and Snow Concentration, Thickness, and Velocity - Daily Mean llc1080 Grid (Version 1 Release 1)
ocean NASA POCLOUD Level 4 NETCDF4
In plain English

What it measures. Daily Arctic estimates of sea-ice and snow cover, how thick the ice is, how much it presses on itself, and which way it drifts. These come from an ocean model rather than direct satellite snapshots.

How it's made. Generated by the ECCO ocean and sea-ice model (run on the MITgcm), specially zoomed in over the Arctic to support NASA's SASSIE field experiment on melting sea ice.

How & where you'd use it. Used to study Arctic sea ice and the fresh, layered water that forms as ice melts, and to provide context for measurements taken during the SASSIE field campaign.

What's measured

OCEANS › SEA ICE › SEA ICE MOTION › SEA ICE SPEEDOCEANS › SEA ICE › SEA ICE MOTION › SEA ICE DIRECTIONOCEANS › SEA ICE › ICE DEPTH/THICKNESSOCEANS › SEA ICE › SNOW DEPTHOCEANS › SEA ICE › SEA ICE CONCENTRATIONEARTH SCIENCE SERVICES › MODELS › OCEAN GENERAL CIRCULATION MODELS (OGCM)/REGIONAL OCEAN MODELS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2014-01-15 → 2021-02-08
  • Measured byMITgcm
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • FormatsNETCDF4
  • 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 dataset provides daily-averaged model-simulated sea-ice and snow concentration, thickness, pressure loading, and velocity from the SASSIE ECCO Version 1 Release 1 (V1R1) ocean and sea-ice state estimate. ECCO (Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean) is a 4D ocean circulation model combining observations with a general circulation model (GCM) to estimate the complete time-evolving state of the global ocean. In this project, it was run over the Arctic polar region in support of the Salinity and Stratification at the Sea Ice Edge (SASSIE) field experiment - a NASA experiment focused on salinity anomalies in the upper ocean generated by melting sea ice. The SASSIE ECCO simulation was produced by downscaling the global ECCO state estimate from 1/3 to 1/12 degree grid cells, where the global solution provided initial and boundary conditions and atmospheric forcing. The output fields for this dataset cover the period 2014-01-15T12:00:00 to 2021-02-07T12:00:00 and are consolidated onto a single curvilinear grid face focusing on the Arctic domain, using the 5 faces of the lat-lon-cap 1080 (llc1080) native grid from the original simulation. Ocean density and pressure are provided at 90 depth levels from 0.5 meters to 6760 meters. Daily files are available in netCDF-4. This dataset is one of 22 produced by SASSIE ECCO - the full list can be found in the user guide. To cite all 22 datasets with a single DOI, please cite the user guide (citation details and DOI can be found within the user guide).

Get the data

sassie_ecco_l4_sea_ice_conc_thick_vel_llc1080grid_daily_v1r1_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="SASSIE_ECCO_L4_SEA_ICE_CONC_THICK_VEL_LLC1080GRID_DAILY_V1R1",
    version="V1R1",
    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 POCLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.