Name: MEaSUREs Global Record of Daily Landscape Freeze/Thaw Status, Version 4
Creator: National Snow and Ice Data Center
Keywords: FREEZE/THAW

MEaSUREs Global Record of Daily Landscape Freeze/Thaw Status, Version 4

Data set id:

NSIDC-0477

DOI: 10.5067/MEASURES/CRYOSPHERE/nsidc-0477.004

Data Citation and Acknowledgment
As a condition of using these data, you must cite the use of this data set. Such a practice gives credit to data set producers and advances principles of transparency and reproducibility.

Kim, Y., Kimball, J. S., Glassy, J. & McDonald, K. C. (2017). MEaSUREs Global Record of Daily Landscape Freeze/Thaw Status. (NSIDC-0477, Version 4). [Data Set]. Boulder, Colorado USA. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/MEASURES/CRYOSPHERE/nsidc-0477.004. [describe subset used if applicable]. Date Accessed 10-08-2025.

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Literature references: Please include the following literature citations in addition to the data citation above:

Kim, Y., Kimball, J. S., Glassy, J. & Du, J.. 2017. An Extended Global Earth System Data Record on Daily Landscape Freeeze-Thaw Determined from Satellite Passive Microwave Remote Sensing. Earth System Science Data. 9. DOI: 10.5194/essd-9-133-2017.

There is a more recent version of these data.
Version Summary

Extended F/T record to 2017;

F/T domain expanded to all land areas affected by seasonal freezing, including urban, snow-ice dominant, open water body dominant, and barren land;

Added a modified seasonal threshold algorithm (MSTA) and pixel-wise, annual MSTA calibration using daily surface air temperature records;

Added bit flags to identify cells (and days) with missing/interpolated Tb, large open water bodies, complex terrain, and large precipitation events;

Overview

This data set, part of the NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) program, consists of two global records of the daily freeze/thaw (F/T) status of the landscape. The primary record is derived from radiometric brightness temperatures acquired between 1979 and 2017 by three satellite-based passive microwave sensors: the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR), the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I), and the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS). A second, synergistic record is available for the years 2002 to 2017, derived from observations acquired by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) and the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2).

Parameter(s):

FREEZE/THAW

Platform(s):

Aqua

DMSP 5D-2/F11

DMSP 5D-2/F13

DMSP 5D-2/F8

DMSP 5D-3/F17

FY-3B

GCOM-W1

Nimbus-7

Sensor(s):

AMSR-E

AMSR2

MWRI

SMMR

SSM/I

SSMIS

Data Format(s):

GIF

HDF5

GeoTIFF

Temporal Coverage:

1 January 1979 to 31 December 2016
19 June 2002 to 27 September 2016
1 January 2017 to 31 December 2017

Temporal Resolution:

1 day

Spatial Resolution:

25 km

25 km

Spatial Reference System(s):

NSIDC EASE-Grid Global
EPSG:3410

Spatial Coverage:

N:
86.7167
S:
-86.7167
E:
179.9999
W:
-179.9999

Blue outlined yellow areas on the map below indicate the spatial coverage for this data set.

View Metadata Record

Data Access & Tools

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

Documentation

User Guide

MEaSUREs Global Record of Daily Landscape Freeze/Thaw Status, Version 4 User Guide

Sensor and Instrument Information

AMSR-E Instrument Description

Help Articles

General Questions & FAQs

FAQs About NSIDC DAAC's Earthdata Cloud Migration

This article covers frequently asked questions about the NASA NSIDC DAAC's Earthdata cloud migration project and what it means to data users.

The NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC) is migrating its primary data access from its legacy, on-premises archive to the NASA Earthdata Cloud.

How to Articles

Downloading Data from Earthdata Cloud to Your Local Computer Using the Command Line

This article shows how to download NSIDC DAAC data from NASA Earthdata Cloud to your computer using three tools: wget and curl—popular command-line utilities for downloading files—and Data Downloader, a Python-based command-line tool developed by the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archi

Many NSIDC DAAC data sets can be accessed using 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.

We recommend using the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) to convert GeoTIFF files into a different format.

To convert HDF5 files into binary format you will need to use the h5dump utility, which is part of the HDF5 distribution available from the HDF Group. How you install HDF5 depends on your operating system.

NASA Earthdata Cloud Data Access Guide

The NASA Earthdata Cloud is the NASA cloud-based archive of Earth observations. It is hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Learn how to find and access NSIDC DAAC data directly in the cloud.

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