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Full catalog/VNP29P1D
VNP29P1D·v2·dataset

Where there's sea ice (Suomi-NPP, daily, 375 m)

VIIRS/NPP Sea Ice Cover Daily L3 Global 375m EASE-Grid 2.0 Day V002
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 active HDF-EOS5
In plain English

What it measures. Daily maps of where sea ice is present, at 375-meter resolution across the globe.

How it's made. Made from the VIIRS instrument on the Suomi-NPP satellite, which converts the sensor's readings into surface temperatures and uses a snow/ice index to flag sea ice, following the older MODIS approach.

How & where you'd use it. Helps monitor sea-ice extent for navigation, weather, and climate studies of the polar regions.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE

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 reports sea ice cover/extent 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 sea ice cover using Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI). VIIRS flies on board the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite.

Get the data

vnp29p1d_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VNP29P1D",
    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.