How cold the ice surface is, daytime (VIIRS NOAA-21, 750 m)

In plain English

What it measures. A daily global map of how cold the sea-ice surface is during the daytime, at about 750-meter detail. It reports the temperature of the ice surface itself.

How it's made. Derived from the VIIRS instrument on the NOAA-21 satellite, which turns the sensor's heat readings into surface temperature using a technique that compares two infrared channels, then grids the results.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for tracking the state of polar sea ice and feeding studies and models of the Arctic and Antarctic.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › ICE TEMPERATURE

Coverage & cadence

Time span2023-02-10 → ongoing
Measured byJPSS-2 (VIIRS) · NOAA-21 (VIIRS)
Processing levelLevel 3
Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
FormatsHDF-EOS5
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 sea ice surface temperature (IST) derived from radiance data acquired by the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). Following the approach used by MODIS, the algorithm converts VIIRS calibrated radiances into brightness temperature and computes IST using a split-window technique. VIIRS flies on board the Joint Polar Satellite System 2 (JPSS-2), also known as NOAA-21.

Get the data

vj230p1d_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VJ230P1D",
    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.

What's measured

Coverage & cadence

What you can do with it

Get the data

Official links