Name: MEaSUREs Greenland Quarterly Ice Sheet Velocity Mosaics from SAR and Landsat, Version 2
Creator: National Snow and Ice Data Center
Keywords: ICE VELOCITY

MEaSUREs Greenland Quarterly Ice Sheet Velocity Mosaics from SAR and Landsat, Version 2

Data set id:

NSIDC-0727

DOI: 10.5067/3ZMCUIFDYJG4

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.

Joughin, I. (2020). MEaSUREs Greenland Quarterly Ice Sheet Velocity Mosaics from SAR and Landsat. (NSIDC-0727, Version 2). [Data Set]. Boulder, Colorado USA. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/3ZMCUIFDYJG4. [describe subset used if applicable]. Date Accessed 09-24-2025.

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Other standard citation formats may be found on the DOI Citation Formatter website (paste 10.5067/3ZMCUIFDYJG4 into the top form field).

Describing subset: When applicable, include the information a reader would need to extract the same subset at the end of your citation. If multiple or complex steps were incolved, it may be more appropriate to include this information in the paper itself.

See our Citation Policies for more details about how to structure your data citation.

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

Joughin, I., Smith, B., Howat, I., Scambos, T. & Moon, T.. 2010. Greenland flow variability from ice-sheet-wide velocity mapping. Journal of Glaciology. 56. DOI: 10.3189/002214310792447734.

Joughin, I., Smith, B. & Howat, I.. 2018. Greenland Ice Mapping Project: ice flow velocity variation at sub-monthly to decadal timescales. The Cryosphere. 12. DOI: 10.5194/tc-12-2211-2018.

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

The following represent key updates as of Version 2. For a detailed list of the differences between versions 1 and 2, refer to the User Guide.

Data set temporal resolution now runs through 30 November 2019.
Application of a new DEM: NSIDC-0715
Addition of dT GeoTIFFs, a temporal offset parameter.
Removal of bad data and addition of overlooked data. As a result, mosaics show more areas with no data, the min/max ex and ey values are lower and feature counts differ.
Cloud-optimized GeoTIFFs along with auxiliary files now available

Overview

This data set, part of the NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) Program, contains quarterly (three-month interval) ice velocity mosaics for the Greenland Ice Sheet. This product is derived from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data obtained by the German Aerospace Center's (DLR) TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X (TSX/TDX) and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Copernicus Sentinel-1A and -1B satellites, and from the US Geological Survey's (USGS) Landsat 8 optical imagery. See Greenland Ice Mapping Project (GIMP) for related data.

Parameter(s):

ICE VELOCITY

Platform(s):

LANDSAT-8

SENTINEL-1A

SENTINEL-1B

TDX

TSX

Sensor(s):

C-SAR

OLI

X-SAR

Data Format(s):

GeoTIFF

JPEG

Shapefile

Temporal Coverage:

1 December 2014 to 30 November 2019

Temporal Resolution:

3 month

Spatial Resolution:

200 m

200 m

Spatial Reference System(s):

Not Specified

Spatial Coverage:

N:
83
S:
60
E:
-14
W:
-75

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 Greenland Quarterly Ice Sheet Velocity Mosaics from SAR and Landsat, Version 2 User Guide

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

How can I use code to read GeoTiffs?

Below the image in this article, you will find sample code in IDL, MATLAB, and Python to read in a GeoTIFF file, extract the metadata, and create an image. The code has been tested with the following data products:

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

We recommend using the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) or a GIS to reproject geoTIFF files.

There are external Jupyter notebooks available that can be used to search for GrIMP products and incorporate them into a new QGIS project:

There are external Jupyter notebooks available that can be used to download user-defined spatial subsets of the following MEaSUREs GrIMP products:

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.