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Full catalog/VJ110
VJ110·v2·dataset

Where there's snow (NOAA-20, 375 m)

VIIRS/JPSS1 Snow Cover 6-Min L2 Swath 375m V002
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 2 active netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Pinpoints where snow was on the ground, at about 375-meter detail, packaged as strips of data along the satellite's path with quality checks built in.

How it's made. Derived from light measurements by the VIIRS instrument on the NOAA-20 (JPSS-1) satellite, which detects snow by comparing surface brightness across different wavelengths.

How & where you'd use it. Supports snow-cover monitoring for water resources, weather, and climate work, especially when fine spatial detail is helpful.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › SNOW COVER

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-01-05 → ongoing
  • Measured byJPSS-1 (VIIRS) · NOAA-20 (VIIRS)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • StatusACTIVE

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 the location of snow cover using radiance data acquired by the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on board the Joint Polar Satellite System's first satellite (JPSS-1). Snow cover is identified using the Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) and a series of quality control screens.

Get the data

vj110_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VJ110",
    version="2",
    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.