How cold the ice surface is, nighttime (VIIRS Suomi-NPP, 750 m)

In plain English

What it measures. A daily global map of how cold the sea-ice surface is at night, at about 750-meter detail, reporting the temperature of the ice surface.

How it's made. Derived from the VIIRS instrument on the Suomi-NPP satellite, which converts the sensor's heat readings into surface temperature using a two-channel infrared technique, then grids the result.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for tracking nighttime polar sea-ice conditions and feeding Arctic and Antarctic studies and models.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › ICE TEMPERATURE

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 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 Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite.

Get the data

vnp30p1n_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VNP30P1N",
    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

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
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
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 Ice Surface Temperature Daily L3 Global 750m EASE-Grid 2.0 Night, Version 2 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
SNPP/JPSS1 VIIRS Ice Surface Temperature Products Collection 2 User Guide [2021] VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
VIIRS Bands and Bandwidths VIEW RELATED INFORMATION