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This tutorial covers four different methods for accessing data through FTP:

This article illustrates the how to convert NetCDF variables to single-band GeoTIFFs. You will need to have the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL, http://gdal.org/) installed on your system before continuing. Once you have acquired the NetCDF file of the tile(s) you are interested in and have GDAL installed, you may execute the following command:  gdal_translate NETCDF:"Input_FileName.nc":variable_name Output_FileName.tif

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: Northern Hemisphere The latitudes and longitudes for the Northern Hemisphere are shown in Figure 1. 

Data subscriptions provide automatic notifications and updates when new data becomes available. This guide covers two methods for setting up subscriptions: the Earthdata Search web interface and the command-line PO.DAAC Data Subscriber tool. PrerequisitesCreate an Earthdata login account if you don't already have one: https://urs.earthdata.nasa.gov/Earthdata SearchEarthdata Search offers two subscription types: dataset subscriptions and granule subscriptions.

The Sea Ice Concentrations from Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I-SSMIS Passive Microwave Data are distributed in gridded binary format. NSIDC provides IDL routines to ingest and read the data.

This external R tutorial guides you through an R script for the NOAA/NSIDC Climate Data Record of Passive Microwave Sea Ice Concentration data in PolarWatch: https://github.com/CoastWatch-WestCoast/r_code/blob/master/accessing_projected_datasets.md It covers the following topics:

This step-by-step tutorial demonstrates how to access MODIS and SMAP data using the Application for Extracting and Exploring Analysis Ready Samples (AppEEARS). AppEEARS allows users to access, explore, and download point and area data with spatial, temporal, and parameter subsets. Interactive visualizations with summary statistics of the sample results allow the user to preview and interact with their sample before downloading the data. NSIDC DAAC data sets available in AppEEARS include:

If you need to use data from Daily 4km Gridded SWE and Snow Depth from Assimilated In-Situ and Modeled Data over the Conterminous US, Version 1 in a GIS (e.g. ArcMap, QGIS), we suggest converting the NetCDFs to GeoTIFFs first. We recommend using the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) to do this, and instructions for downloading and installing GDAL can be found here: https://gdal.org/download.html

This article explains how to find LVIS science products in NASA's Earthdata Search using filenames from the exploratory tools and KMZ files available on the NASA LVIS campaigns webpage.

The following are instructions on how to import and geolocate SMAP Level-1C HDF5 data in ENVI. Testing notes Software: ENVI Software version: 5.3 and above. If using version 5.3, service pack 5.3.1 is needed.  Platform: Windows 7 Data set: SMAP L1C Radiometer Half-Orbit 36 km EASE-Grid Brightness Temperatures (SPL1CTB) Data set version: 2 Date tested: 12/14/15

The following are instructions on how to import and geolocate SMAP Level-3 Radiometer Soil Moisture HDF5 data in ENVI. Testing notes Software: ENVI Software version: 5.3 Platform: Windows 7 Data set: SMAP L3 Radiometer Global Daily 36 km EASE-Grid Soil Moisture (SPL3SMP) Data set version: 2 Date tested: 12/17/15

This article describes the actions to perform in order to work with NSIDC-0611 in ArcGIS. At the time of writing, this tutorial is relevant for ArcMap10.5 and earlier. The following steps will show you how to prepare the binary files for import, format conversion, and geolocation/projection.

This short article explains where to find Global Monthly EASE-Grid SWE data products and then how to import them into ArcGIS. The global, monthly SWE EASE-Grid products can be found here: Global Monthly EASE-Grid Snow Water Equivalent Climatology, Version 1 (NSIDC-0271)

This article describes the process for importing IMS ASCII data, in 1, 4, and 24km resolutions into ArcGIS using ArcMap v10.5. The data product is called IMS Daily Northern Hemisphere Snow and Ice Analysis at 1 km, 4 km, and 24 km Resolutions (G02156). Note that there are both packed and unpacked versions of the 24km resolution data.

This How to guide outlines the steps for properly importing, projecting and visualizing HDF and NetCDF files in ArcMap. A couple of things to note before you start: It is only relevant to ESRI ArcMap 10.5 and later versions. If you are running ArcMap 10.4.1 there is a patch you can download. If you are working in older versions of ArcMap then please note there is a workaround for SMAP data sets, further details at the bottom of this article.

This article describes the actions to perform in order work with NSIDC-0116 in ArcGIS. At the time of writing, this tutorial is relevant for ArcMap10.5 and earlier. The following steps will show you how to prepare the binary files for import, format conversion, geolocation/projection, and display options for gridded vectors.

Directions for Importing Bamber Greenland DEM, Ice Thickness (thick_5km_corrected), and / or Bedrock Thickness (bed_5km_corrected) into ArcGIS.  In this example, we'll bring the Bamber Greenland DEM (surface_5km_corrected) into ArcGIS, but the same methodology applies for importing the Ice Thickness (thick_5km_corrected), or Bedrock Thickness (bed_5km_corrected) files into ArcGIS. Data product: Greenland 5 km DEM, Ice Thickness, and Bedrock Elevation Grids

These are directions for importing the grnlnd_dem_wgs84.dat (a flat binary with a 2-byte integer) into ArcGIS.

SMAP Ancillary data sets are used to produce SMAP Level-1, -2, -3, and -4 standard data products. Several of these ancillary data sets are produced by external organizations, such as NOAA, the NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO), and NASA Land Data Assimilation Systems (LDAS).

There are two tricky steps in reading binary data in FORTRAN. First you must open the file with the proper mode, then you must correctly read and interpret the data values. There is no one correct way to do either of these steps. It often takes a fair bit of trial and error to get it right. It is therefore essential that you have test data to read with documented examples of known values.