Polar Pathfinder Daily 25 km EASE-Grid Sea Ice Motion Vectors, Version 2
Data set id:
NSIDC-0116
DOI: 10.5067/LHAKY495NL2T
There is a more recent version of these data.
Version Summary

Changes to this algorithm include:



  • Added AMSR-E and NCEP/NCAR data for the Northern Hemisphere

  • Extended gridded data from November 1978 through December 2012

  • Updated data and documentation to reflect change to Version 2 (V2)

Overview

Daily ice motion vectors are computed from a wide variety of sensors ranging from passive microwave radiometers, such as the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR), to International Arctic Buoy Programme (IABP) buoy data. Daily gridded fields combine data from all sensors, from November 1978 through December 2012. Grids extend from 48.4° N to 90° N, and from 53.2° S to 90° S. Mean gridded fields include yearly, monthly, and weekly means, and a mean for the entire time series. Both daily and mean gridded fields are in 2-byte integer format, reprojected to 25 km Northern and Southern Hemisphere EASE-Grids. Browse images of mean fields are available in Portable Network Graphics (PNG) and Postscript (PS) formats. Raw ice motion vectors from each sensor are in tab-delimited ASCII text format.
Parameter(s):
ICE VELOCITYSEA ICE MOTIONSURFACE WINDS
Platform(s):
AQUA, BUOYS, DMSP 5D-2/F11, DMSP 5D-2/F13, DMSP 5D-2/F8, DMSP 5D-3/F17, NOAA-11, NOAA-12, NOAA-14, NOAA-9, Nimbus-7
Sensor(s):
AMSR-E, AVHRR, DRIFTING BUOYS, SMMR, SSM/I, SSMIS
Data Format(s):
PNG, Binary, ASCII, PSD
Temporal Coverage:
25 October 1978 to 31 December 2012
Temporal Resolution:
  • 1 year
  • 1 month
  • 1 day
  • 7 day
  • 7 month
Spatial Resolution:
  • 25 km
  • 25 km
Spatial Coverage:
N:
-53.2028
S:
-90
E:
180
W:
-180
N:
90
S:
48.4
E:
180
W:
-180
Blue outlined yellow areas on the map below indicate the spatial coverage for this data set.

Data Access & Tools

This data set has been retired. There is a more recent version of these data.

Documentation

Help Articles

How to Articles

This article describes how to convert the u (horizontal) and v (vertical) components from the ice motion data set to East and North components on the Earth's surface. Instructions for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are described below:
This article describes the actions to perform in order work with NSIDC-0116 in ArcGIS. At the time of writing, this tutorial is relevant for ArcMap10.5 and earlier.
Data from the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC) can be accessed directly from our HTTPS file system. We provide basic command line Wget and curl instructions for HTTPS file system downloads below.