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Full catalog/VNP10
VNP10·v2·dataset

Where there's snow (Suomi-NPP, 375 m)

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

What it measures. Identifies where snow was on the ground at about 375-meter detail, delivered as strips of data along the satellite's track with quality-control screening applied.

How it's made. Derived from light measurements by the VIIRS instrument on the Suomi-NPP satellite, which detects snow by comparing how bright surfaces appear in different wavelengths.

How & where you'd use it. Supports snow-cover monitoring for water resources, weather, and climate studies where finer spatial detail is valuable.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › SNOW COVER

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2012-01-19 → ongoing
  • Measured bySuomi-NPP (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 snow cover using radiance data acquired by the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on board the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite. Snow cover is identified using the Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) and a series of quality control screens.

Get the data

vnp10_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VNP10",
    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.