Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/SnowMeltDuration_PMicrowave_1843
SnowMeltDuration_PMicrowave_1843·v1.1·dataset

When Arctic snow melts each year (1988-2018)

ABoVE: Passive Microwave-derived Annual Snow Melt Duration Date Maps, 1988-2018
atmosphere NASA ORNL_CLOUD Level 3 multiple
In plain English

What it measures. Maps showing, for each year from 1988 to 2018, how long the annual snow-melt period lasted across Alaska, northwest Canada, and parts of far eastern Russia (the number of days from when melting began to when the snow was fully gone), at about 6-kilometer detail.

How it's made. Derived from long-running passive microwave satellite records (how the snowpack looks to microwave sensors) by tracking the start and end of melting each year.

How & where you'd use it. Studying how snow-melt timing varies across the Arctic and changes over three decades; note that pixels near coasts can be skewed by nearby water.

What's measured

CLIMATE INDICATORS › CRYOSPHERIC INDICATORS › SNOW COVERCLIMATE INDICATORS › CRYOSPHERIC INDICATORS › SNOW MELTCRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › SNOW COVERCRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › SNOW MELTTERRESTRIAL HYDROSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › SNOW MELT

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1988-02-09 → 2018-07-20
  • Measured byNimbus-7 (SMMR) · DMSP 5D-2/F10 (SSMIS) · Aqua (AMSR-E) · DMSP (SSM)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, 51.6, -107.833, 72.41
  • Formatsmultiple
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

This dataset provides the annual period of snowpack melting (i.e., snow melt duration, SMD) across northwest Canada; Alaska, U.S.; and parts of far eastern Russia at 6.25 km resolution for the period 1988-2018. SMD is the number of days between the main melt onset date (MMOD) and the last day of seasonal snow cover when the melting of snow is complete. These dates were derived from the Making Earth Science Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) Calibrated Enhanced-Resolution Passive Microwave (PMW) EASE-Grid Brightness Temperature (Tb) Earth System Data Record (ESDR). This dataset documents variability in SMD across space and the 31-year temporal period. The data from 1988-2016 included a coastal mask removing coastal pixels due to potential water contamination from coarse brightness temperature observations (Dersken et al., 2012). There is not a coastal mask for the 2017-2018 data. The full data are included, and data users should be aware that coastal values can be adversely affected by adjacent water bodies.

Get the data

snowmeltduration_pmicrowave_1843_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="SnowMeltDuration_PMicrowave_1843",
    version="1.1",
    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 ORNL_CLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.