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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. Full instructions for installing and using h5dump on Mac/Unix and Windows are provided below.
The NSIDC provides Python scripts for reformatting specific NSIDC SMMR-SSM/I-SSMIS data products in polar stereographic projections from NetCDF to binary. This includes NSIDC Brightness Temperature Data Sets (NSIDC-0001 and NSIDC-0080) and NSIDC Sea Ice Concentration Data Sets (NSIDC-0051, NSIDC-0081, and NSIDC-0079).
You will first need to have GDAL installed on your system before proceeding on to the following steps. NSIDC User Services is not able to provide support for installing GDAL, but we have found using a package manager such as MacPorts (https://guide.macports.org/) simplifies the installation process on a Mac. There are additional package managers available for Linux users.
This article describes the use of Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) tools for converting SNODAS binary files to NetCDF or GeoTIFF.
AMSR-E sea ice data sets are provided in the Polar Stereographic projection.
The following are instructions on how to import and display AMSR-E Daily Soil Moisture HDF data in ArcGIS. These instructions were tested with ArcGIS 10.0.
1. Download the AMSR-E Daily L3 Soil Moisture HDF data file of interest to you.
Note that you will not need any other files (i.e., header file) in order to open the HDF data in ArcMap.
Learn how to import EASE-Grid 2.0 data files into ArcGIS in this step-by-step help article
The following steps outline the process for visualizing the GLAS/ICESat 500 m Laser Altimetry Digital Elevation Model of Antarctica (NSIDC-0304) data product in ArcGIS. At the time of writing, these instructions are relevant to ArcMap 10.4
This article describes how to import passive microwave EASE-Grid brightness temperature data into ArcGIS.
For importing EASE-Grid 2.0 data into ArcGIS, refer to How do I import EASE-Grid 2.0 snow cover and sea ice data into ArcGIS?
The following are instructions describing how to import sea ice binary files into ArcGIS. These instructions were tested with ArcMap 10.5 and 10.6.1. Rename the Data File.In order to be able to import a Polar Stereographic sea ice concentration file into ArcGIS, you will need to:Rename the file extension, changing it from .bin to .bilExample: nt_20090115_f17_nrt_n.bin to nt_20090115_f17_nrt_n.bil
The following steps will work for all eight SNODAS variables in ArcGIS 10.0 or higher.
SMAP data files contain rich quality information that can be useful for many data users. The retrieval quality flag and surface flag bit values and interpretations are documented in the respective product Data Fields pages of the user guides for these data products
Level-2 soil moisture product (SPL2SMP) spl2smp#retrieval_qual_flag spl2smp#surface_flag
Go to the SPL2SMP data set landing page to review the user guide
NASA Earthdata Search is a map-based web interface for discovering and ordering data using spatial and temporal filters. This article explains how to search for ICESat/GLAS data based on spatial and temporal constraints. Additionally, you can subset files based on spatial bounding box, parameter, and temporal range, as well as reformat the data to ASCII.
We recommend using the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) or a GIS to reproject geoTIFF files. Here we outline command line or python options for using GDAL, and instructions for QGIS and ArcMap to reproject a geoTIFF into geographic lat/lon projection.
Each AE_L2A data file has a time stamp for each scan. The time array is stored as Vdata under the variable name, Time.
a) Using the hdp tool, the Time array can be dumped into a text file using the following commands:
hdp dumpvd –n Time input file > output file
Example: hdp dumpvd -n Time AMSR_E_L2A_BrightnessTemperatures_V12_200206010011_D.hdf > time.txt
Refer to The HDF Group for more information on the hdp tool.
"Freeboard" is a measure of the height of sea ice above the ocean surface. The geoid height field ("d_gdHt") cannot be effectively used as a proxy for sea level in order to estimate freeboard, because current models of the Earth's geoid are too coarse to account for the local variations in geoid height that ICESat/GLAS actually detects.
The instructions below will describe how to extract elevation in text format from GLAS HDF5 Altimetry data using the free open source tool HDFView. The following example was created using GLAS/ICESat L1B Global Elevation Data, Version 34 (GLAH06), but this method can be applied to the other GLAS HDF5 Altimetry data as well.
Data format: HDF5
Software: HDFView version 3.1.0
Operating System/Playform: Windows/PC (not tested on macOS)
There are several places you can find example code and other resources to read SMAP data in MATLAB, Python, IDL, and NCL:
The HDF Group has example code for access and visualization of MODIS, GLAS HDF5, AMSR-E, and NISE data in MATLAB, IDL, Python, and NCL.
Go to HDF Group example code >