• On Wednesday, March 20, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (US Mountain Time), the following data collections may not be available due to planned system maintenance: ASO, AMSR Unified, AMSR-E, Aquarius, High Mountain Asia, IceBridge, ICESat/GLAS, ICESat-2, LVIS, MEaSUREs, MODIS, Nimbus, SMAP, SnowEx, SSM/I-SSMIS and VIIRS.

Sea Ice Concentrations from Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I-SSMIS Passive Microwave Data, Version 2
Data set id:
NSIDC-0051
DOI: 10.5067/MPYG15WAA4WX
This is the most recent version of these data.
Version Summary
Conversion to netCDF format.

Overview

This data set is generated from brightness temperature data and is designed to provide a consistent time series of sea ice concentrations spanning the coverage of several passive microwave instruments.The data are provided in the polar stereographic projection at a grid cell size of 25 x 25 km.
Parameter(s):
SEA ICE CONCENTRATION
Platform(s):
DMSP 5D-2/F11, DMSP 5D-2/F13, DMSP 5D-2/F8, DMSP 5D-3/F17, Nimbus-7
Sensor(s):
SMMR, SSM/I, SSMIS
Data Format(s):
PNG, netCDF-4
Temporal Coverage:
26 October 1978 to 30 September 2023
Temporal Resolution:
  • 1 day
  • 1 month
Spatial Resolution:
  • 25 km
  • 25 km
Spatial Reference System(s):
NSIDC Sea Ice Polar Stereographic North
EPSG:3411

NSIDC Sea Ice Polar Stereographic South
EPSG:3412
Spatial Coverage:
N:
-39.23
S:
-90
E:
180
W:
-180
N:
90
S:
30.98
E:
180
W:
-180
Blue outlined yellow areas on the map below indicate the spatial coverage for this data set.
Strengths and Limitations

Strengths

Limitations

 

Data Access & Tools

A free NASA Earthdata Login account is required to access these data. Learn More

Help Articles

General Questions & FAQs

NSIDC currently archives passive microwave sea ice concentration products based on two algorithms: the NASA Team algorithm and the Bootstrap algorithm. Both algorithms were developed by researchers at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the 1980s.

How to Articles

Many NSIDC DAAC data sets can be accessed using the NSIDC DAAC's Data Access Tool. This tool provides the ability to search and filter data with spatial and temporal constraints using a map-based interface.Users have the option to
The NSIDC Data Map Services Application Programming Interface (API) provides HTTP URLs for requesting geo-registered map images from NSIDC's geospatial database. A WMS request defines the geographic layer(s) and area of interest to be processed.
The NSIDC provides Python scripts for reformatting specific NSIDC SMMR-SSM/I-SSMIS data products in polar stereographic projections from NetCDF to binary.
The NSIDC Python Reformatting and Subsetting (PyRS) tool is a command line tool which prompts the user to specify data reformatting and subsetting preferences. Output formats available are native, GeoTIFF, and NetCDF.