• NSIDC DAAC is currently upgrading our data ingest process for NASA Earthdata Cloud. During this transition, users may notice temporary interruptions in data availability or notice small data gaps. All gaps will be resolved as quickly as possible. During this upgrade jpeg browse imagery will also not be available for preview in Earthdata search. Please reach out to NSIDC User Services with any questions or concerns.

  • As of 01 September 2025, the NASA AMSR2 SIPS will stop processing and delivering updates to Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer Unified (AMSR Unified) data sets. For more information, see "User notice: Updates to NASA AMSR-E/AMSR2 Unified data sets to cease on 01 September 2025".

  • On Wednesday, September 10 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. (US Mountain Time), this data set may not be available in the legacy data archive due to a planned system maintenance. Earthdata Cloud access will remain available for data sets that have migrated. Users of the SMAP near real-time products should use the NASA LANCE HTTPS File System for data access.

  • The NSIDC DAAC is retiring access to its legacy, on-premises data archive and transitioning to the NASA Earthdata Cloud as the primary data archive. View planned retirement dates here.

AMSR-E/AMSR2 Unified L3 Global Daily 25 km EASE-Grid Snow Water Equivalent, Version 1
Data set id:
AU_DySno
DOI: 10.5067/8AE2ILXB5SM6
This is the most recent version of these data.
Version Summary
Initial data release

Overview

This AMSR-E/AMSR2 Unified Level-3 (L3) data set provides daily estimates of Snow Water Equivalent (SWE). SWE was derived from brightness temperature measurements acquired by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) instrument on board the JAXA GCOM-W1 satellite. The SWE data is rendered to an azimuthal 25 km Equal-Area Scalable Earth Grid (EASE-Grid) for both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere. Note: This data set uses JAXA AMSR2 Level-1R (L1R) input brightness temperatures that are calibrated, or unified, across the JAXA AMSR-E and JAXA AMSR2 L1R products.
Parameter(s):
SNOW WATER EQUIVALENT
Platform(s):
GCOM-W1
Sensor(s):
AMSR2
Data Format(s):
HDF-EOS5
Temporal Coverage:
  • 2 July 2012 to present
Temporal Resolution:
  • 1 day
Spatial Resolution:
  • 25 km
  • 25 km
Spatial Reference System(s):
  • NSIDC EASE-Grid North
    EPSG:3408
  • NSIDC EASE-Grid South
    EPSG:3409
Spatial Coverage:
  • N:
    90
    S:
    -90
    E:
    180
    W:
    -180
Blue outlined yellow areas on the map below indicate the spatial coverage for this data set.

Data Access & Tools

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

Help Articles

General Questions & FAQs

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

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:
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.
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.
All data from the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC) is directly accessible through our HTTPS file system using Wget or curl. This article provides basic command line instructions for accessing data using this method.