Name: Polar Pathfinder Daily 25 km EASE-Grid Sea Ice Motion Vectors, Version 1
Creator: National Snow and Ice Data Center
Keywords: ICE VELOCITY,SEA ICE MOTION,SURFACE WINDS

Polar Pathfinder Daily 25 km EASE-Grid Sea Ice Motion Vectors, Version 1

Data set id:

NSIDC-0116

DOI: 10.5067/NG348BM3HPCA

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.

Fowler, C. (2003). Polar Pathfinder Daily 25 km EASE-Grid Sea Ice Motion Vectors. (NSIDC-0116, Version 1). [Data Set]. Boulder, Colorado USA. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/NG348BM3HPCA. [describe subset used if applicable]. Date Accessed 09-24-2025.

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

Initial release

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 2006. 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 Enhanced Postscript (EPS) formats. Raw ice motion vectors from each sensor are in tab-delimited ASCII text format.

Parameter(s):

ICE VELOCITY

SEA ICE MOTION

SURFACE WINDS

Platform(s):

BUOYS

DMSP 5D-2/F11

DMSP 5D-2/F13

DMSP 5D-2/F8

NOAA-11

NOAA-12

NOAA-14

NOAA-9

Nimbus-7

Sensor(s):

AVHRR

DRIFTING BUOYS

SMMR

SSM/I

Data Format(s):

PNG

Binary

ASCII

PSD

Temporal Coverage:

25 October 1978 to 31 December 2006

Temporal Resolution:

1 month
1 day
7 day
1 year

Spatial Resolution:

25 km

25 km

Spatial Reference System(s):

Not Specified

Spatial Coverage:

N:
90
S:
48.7278
E:
180
W:
-180
N:
-53.2028
S:
-90
E:
180
W:
-180

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.

Help Articles

How to Articles

How to convert the horizontal and vertical components to east and north

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: