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Full catalog/SNEX23_SSA_SO
SNEX23_SSA_SO·v1·dataset

Bare-ground laser scans of snow grain structure (SnowEx)

SnowEx23 Laser Snow Microstructure Specific Surface Area Snow-off Data V001
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 2 ASCII
In plain English

What it measures. Vertical profiles of how reflective snow is and the size of its grains (a property called specific surface area), measured at study sites in Alaska. These were taken when there was no fresh snow cover (the 'snow-off' baseline).

How it's made. Collected by hand on the ground during a 2023 NASA field campaign using a laser-based snow sensor, with reflectance readings converted into grain-size estimates during processing.

How & where you'd use it. Gives researchers ground-truth measurements of snow structure in boreal forest and Arctic tundra, useful for understanding snow and comparing against satellite snow data.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › SNOW MICROSTRUCTURE › SPECIFIC SURFACE AREA

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2023-10-17 → 2023-10-28
  • Measured byGROUND-BASED OBSERVATIONS (IceCube)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-149.5964, 68.5284, -148.6127, 70.084
  • FormatsASCII
  • 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 reports vertical profiles of snow reflectance and specific surface area (SSA) from two study sites in Alaska, USA collected as part of the NASA SnowEx 2023 field campaign. The study sites include a boreal forest environment in the Fairbanks region of central Alaska (the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest, the Caribou Poker Creek watershed and Farmers Loop/Creamer’s Field), and a coastal tundra environment in the North Slope region of northern Alaska (the Arctic coastal plain and Upper Kuparuk Toolik). Reflectance was measured in situ using an A2 Photonic Sensor IceCube (1310 nm). Measured reflectance values were converted to SSA during data processing following the methods of Gallet et al., (2009). Snow-on SSA data from these same study sites were collected in March 2023 and are available as <a href="https://nsidc.org/data/snex23_ssa/versions/1">SnowEx23 Laser Snow Microstructure Specific Surface Area Data, Version 1</a>.

Get the data

snex23_ssa_so_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="SNEX23_SSA_SO",
    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.