Where snow is on the ground (VIIRS, Suomi-NPP, daily, 375 m)

In plain English

What it measures. Daily maps showing where snow is covering the ground worldwide, at 375-meter detail. Each pixel is judged snow or not, using how snow reflects light differently across bands.

How it's made. Derived from the VIIRS instrument on the Suomi-NPP satellite by combining short 6-minute passes into a daily gridded composite, with screening steps to catch and flag uncertain detections.

How & where you'd use it. Helps track snow cover for water-supply forecasting, flood prediction, climate monitoring, and studying how snowpack changes through the seasons and over years.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › SNOW COVER

Coverage & cadence

Time span2012-01-19 → ongoing
Measured bySuomi-NPP (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 contains daily snow cover derived from radiance data acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on board the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite. The data is a gridded composite, generated from 6 minute swaths, and projected to a 375 m Sinusoidal grid. Snow cover is identified using the Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) and a series of screens designed to alleviate errors and flag uncertain snow cover detections.

Get the data

vnp10a1_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VNP10A1",
    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.

Official links

Search and order NASA Earth Science data using spatial and temporal filters. Reformatting, reprojecting, and subsetting options are available for some data sets. GET DATA
Quickly download a few files using a web browser, or access data through a command-line utility such as WGET. GET DATA
Search data by spatial and/or temporal ranges or file name. Choose from various download options, including a Python script. GET DATA
A Python library to search and access NASA Earth science data with just a few lines of code GET DATA
Find more data access options and help resources. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
VIIRS/NPP Snow Cover Daily L3 Global 375m SIN Grid, Version 2 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
SNPP/JPSS1 VIIRS Snow Cover Products Collection 2 User Guide [2021] VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
Continuity of MODIS and VIIRS Snow Cover Extent Data Products for Development of an Earth Science Data Record VIEW RELATED INFORMATION