Data Tools
Explore web services, interactive tutorials, and other tools to access and work with NSIDC data
There are many ways to access and work with NSIDC data to accommodate a wide diversity of users. Use the filter menu to explore and narrow down your options. Note that the list defaults to show our Featured tools first, however, you have more options in the Sort by menu.
- To see which tools are available for which data sets, you must go to a specific data set landing page. On the landing page under Data Access and Tools, you will see data-set specific tools to access and work with the data.
- Once you are ready to find a data set, explore our data catalog.
By capability
By output file type
Persistent HTTPS File System that is not affected by regular NSIDC maintenance downtimes. Quickly download a few files using a web browser, or access data through a command-line utility such as WGET.
Type:
service
Quickly download a few files using a web browser, or access data through a command-line utility such as WGET.
Access and download NOAA@NSIDC data using a web browser, or through a command line utility such as WGET, or using programming languages such as R or Python.
Type:
service
Download data via FTP using an FTP client, command line utility or a script, e.g., Python
Type:
service
Filter files before downloading based on date, spatial area, or file name. Choose from various download options, such as Python script. Export bounding boxes as a GeoJSON.
Search, visualize, and download data from NSIDC's long-term IceBridge archive. The portal provides flight lines, map-based granule extents, browse images (where available), Northern and Southern Hemisphere polar views, spatial and temporal filters, and keyword search options.
Discover, access, and visualize data from NASA's ICESat and ICESat-2 missions.
Supported software languages:
Python
Type: Web Application
Customization Capabilities:
spatial subsetting
temporal subsetting
Search and order data from all NASA DAACs using spatial and temporal filters in a map interface. Reformatting, reprojecting, and subsetting options are available for some data sets.
Type: Web Application
earthaccess is a python library to search and access NASA Earth science data with just a few lines of code.
Supported software languages:
Python
Prepare analysis ready data and reduce time-to-science. Apply spatial and temporal subsetting to reduce data volume. Achieve seamless access to data across different NASA data centers.
Type:
service
Customization Capabilities:
spatial subsetting
temporal subsetting
Programmatically request selected data products through our API. This tool is valuable for selecting just the parameters you need from big data sets. Apply spatial and temporal filters, subsetting, reformatting, and reprojection.
Customization Capabilities:
data reformatting
reprojection
spatial subsetting
variable subsetting
Interpolation Options:
Bicubic Interpolation
Bilinear Interpolation
Nearest Neighbor
Output Projections:
Geographic
Universal Transverse Mercator
Polar Stereographic
Sinusoidal
Plate Carree
Programmatically request selected data products through NSIDC's API. Bulk download using spatial and temporal filters, or incorporate data access commands into code/scripts as needed.
Browse and display global satellite imagery layers from NASA GIBS. Download raw data, share screenshots, and create animations from the imagery.
Type: Web Application
Customization Capabilities:
data reformatting
Visualize and download data from the GLIMS Glacier Database using a map-based interface.
Type: Web Application
Search and download data from the GLIMS Glacier Database, using custom parameters in a text-search form.
Type: Web Application
Sign up for automatic delivery of new data from active NASA satellite missions. Customize data with reformatting, reprojection, and subsetting if desired.
Customization Capabilities:
data reformatting
reprojection
spatial subsetting
variable subsetting
Sign up for automatic delivery of new data from active NASA satellite missions. Data products are delivered via SCP or HTTPS pull.
Access data directly from the NASA Earthdata Cloud via Amazon Web Services Simple Storage Service (AWS S3). This access option is only available when working within the us-west-2 region and requires additional AWS S3 credentials.
Type:
service
Extract point and area samples from geospatial data via spatial, temporal, and/or parameter subsetting. Preview and interact with samples before downloading. The Application for Extracting and Exploring Analysis Ready Samples tool is only available for select NSIDC data products.
Type: Web Application
Customization Capabilities:
data reformatting
reprojection
spatial subsetting
temporal subsetting
variable subsetting
Spatially search for and download land ice velocity data from Landsat 8, using a map interface.
Search the Glacier Photograph Collection by glacier name, location, date, photographer, and more. View lower-resolution photographs online and order high-resolution versions.
Search the entire World Glacier Inventory by glacier name, number, or parameters (latitude/longitude, altitude, size, length, features). Specify output parameters and format (text or .csv file).
Customization Capabilities:
variable subsetting
Browse Arctic- and Antarctic-wide changes in sea ice. View daily and monthly averages of extent and concentration. View time series graphs of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice.
View and download the most recent daily observations of sea ice extent and ice edge boundary for the entire Arctic and/or a specific region. Compare time series of sea ice extent from the most recent four weeks to the same four-week period in the previous four years.
Learn how to discover, access, subset, and visualize Arctic sea ice data from Python-based Jupyter Notebooks. Tutorial comes with open-source libraries to harmonize sea ice height from ICESat-2, and ice surface temperature from MODIS.
Supported software languages:
Python
Customization Capabilities:
spatial subsetting
temporal subsetting
variable subsetting
reprojection
Display browse images for five different parameters from three different NOAA@NSIDC Arctic sea ice products in a spreadsheet-like format.
See how Arctic/Antarctic sea ice extent changes throughout the calendar year using a customizable graph in a web browser. Compare extents for all years since 1979, and click on any point in any year's trajectory for a map of daily sea ice concentration.
Download data, and explore data coverage and customization using the Python-based Jupyter Notebook.
Supported software languages:
Python
Customization Capabilities:
reprojection
spatial subsetting
temporal subsetting
variable subsetting
Access georegistered images for data layers from select NSIDC data products. Use OGC protocols (WMS, WFS, and WCS) through HTTP URLs or OGC-compatible clients (ArcMap, QGIS, Google Earth) to access the data.
Customization Capabilities:
data reformatting
reprojection
spatial subsetting
temporal subsetting
variable subsetting
Geolocate and display EASE-Grid and EASE-Grid 2.0 data sets with IDL software.
Supported software languages:
IDL
Search the Global Lake and River Ice Phenology Database for freeze/thaw dates and the physical characteristics for several hundred lakes and rivers. You can search using country, latitude/longitude, name, freeze status, and temporal range. Select the desired output format: browser, CSV, or ASCII.
Customization Capabilities:
variable subsetting
Download GoLIVE data via FTP using an FTP client or command line utility.
Type:
service
Use example Python, MATLAB, IDL, or NCL code to import, read, and/or visualize select NSIDC DAAC data products.
Supported software languages:
MATLAB
Python
IDL
Type: Downloadable Software
Explore contents of HDF4 and HDF5 files, including file structure, metadata, and parameter values.
Type: Downloadable Software
Compare decades of harmonized data across pre-IceBridge, IceBridge, ICESat/GLAS, and ICESat-2 data products. Access and visualize data using a download widget, map-based customization, API code examples, and other tools.
Customization Capabilities:
data reformatting
reprojection
spatial subsetting
temporal subsetting
Access ICESat-2 data with as few as three lines of code. This Python software library wraps around APIs supported by the NSIDC DAAC.
Supported software languages:
Python
Type: Downloadable Software
Customization Capabilities:
spatial subsetting
temporal subsetting
variable subsetting
Notebook for streaming cloud-hosted ICESat-2 ATL15 (Gridded Antarctic/Arctic Land Ice Height) to calculate dh/dt trends.
Type: Downloadable Software
Demonstrates using the earthaccess python package to search for and directly access cloud-hosted ICESat-2 data from an Amazon Compute Cloud (EC2) instance. This python-based Jupyter notebook uses Land Ice Height (ATL06) granules as an example.
Supported software languages:
Python
Utilize the Jupyterbook for the latest Hackweek virtual event and learn about the ICESat-2 satellite, data products, data-access tools, and more. Access past hackwork tutorials from the ICESat-2 Hackweek Github Organization listed in the Quick Links.
Supported software languages:
Python
Type: Downloadable Software
Customization Capabilities:
spatial subsetting
temporal subsetting
variable subsetting
Find ICESat/GLAS laser track start dates and times, as well as track identification information, choosing from multiple data/time formats.
Type: Web Application
Find information about ICESat/GLAS laser track start times and dates based on laser track. You can search based on a specific period or for all time periods.
Type: Web Application
Interpolate BedMachine Antarctica data (NSIDC-0756) onto user-defined polar stereo coordinates with Python and MATLAB scripts. This tool lets you reproject data to geodetic latitude/longitude.
Supported software languages:
MATLAB
Python
Customization Capabilities:
reprojection
Search and select Greenland Ice Mapping Project GIMP data at NSIDC, guided by a Python-based Jupyter Notebook. Build a QGIS project file from the search results. View data remotely if desired.
Supported software languages:
Python
Type: Downloadable Software
Last updated:
Spatially and temporally filter Greenland Ice Mapping Project (GIMP) image and velocity data, guided by a Python-based Jupyter Notebook. Spatially subset data and download in NetCDF format. This tool creates an interactive plot of time series data at selected points.
Supported software languages:
Python
Type: Downloadable Software
Last updated:
Customization Capabilities:
spatial subsetting
variable subsetting
data reformatting
Reformat and/or visualize LVIS level 1B and 2 data products. Readers are available in C and IDL.
Supported software languages:
C
IDL
Type: Downloadable Software
Customization Capabilities:
data reformatting
Calculate past and future satellite overpasses, based on latitude/longitude or map location.
Type: Web Application
Use Python scripts to read and visualize daily and monthly snow depth and snow water equivalent ASCII files from the Canadian Meteorological Center Daily Snow Depth Analysis Data (NSIDC-0477) product. Convert a one-year snow depth ASCII file to GeoTIFF.
Supported software languages:
Python
Type: Downloadable Software
Last updated:
Customization Capabilities:
data reformatting
Access GLIMS data using web map services in GIS software.
A set of software tools that can be used to read HDF-EOS files containing MODIS swath data and produce flat binary files containing gridded data in a variety of map projections.
Type: Downloadable Software
Customization Capabilities:
reprojection
spatial subsetting
Search the Online Dehn Ice Charts database by geographic region and/or date range. Order charts meeting your search criteria.
Access selected data products over the internet with NASA's data access protocol. Subset and reformat data through a web browser, command line interface, or custom interface, e.g., C NetCDF- or Java NetCDF-compliant programs.
Customization Capabilities:
data reformatting
spatial subsetting
variable subsetting
Reformat and/or visualize IceBridge data products using readers available in multiple programming languages.
Supported software languages:
Matlab
C
IDL
Python
Perl
Customization Capabilities:
data reformatting
Visualize georeferenced arrays in NetCDF, HDF and GRIB formats. Plot data on global or regional maps, choosing from multiple map projections. Overlay continent outlines or masks.
Type: Downloadable Software
Use this toolbox to read, process, analyze, and output ICESat-2 ATL03 and ATL08 data in these formats: figures, .las, .csv, .kml.
Supported software languages:
Python
Type: Downloadable Software
Customization Capabilities:
data reformatting
spatial subsetting
temporal subsetting
variable subsetting
Use this GUI to interpret, label, and visualize ICESat-2 ATL03 data.
Type: Downloadable Software
Customization Capabilities:
spatial subsetting
temporal subsetting
Access, subset, project, interpolate, analyze, and/or combine data products with this Python library. Useful for geospatial analyses run locally or in the cloud.
Supported software languages:
Python
Type: Downloadable Software
Customization Capabilities:
data reformatting
spatial subsetting
temporal subsetting
variable subsetting
reprojection
Visualize changes in Arctic air temperatures, frozen ground, sea ice concentration and age, snow cover duration, vegetation greenness, and water vapor. Animate maps and time series graphs.
Search the SCICEX data inventory. Data that are archived at NSIDC and externally are listed. To access data archived at NSIDC use the FTP File System access option. For externally archived data, the links will direct you to external tools to retrieve the data.
Type: Web Application
Analyze monthly or daily sea ice concentration and extent. Plot monthly extent anomalies. Display concentration trend images based on date, climatology, and trend range.
View animated maps of monthly sea ice extent, concentration, anomalies and trends for the Northern and Southern Hemisphere.
Compare sea ice extent for any two days or months between 1979 and present.
Search for and download NSIDC DAAC data using the earthaccess python package. This python-based Jupyter notebook also demonstrates geospatial operations to crop and resample one GeoTIFF based on the extent and pixel size of another GeoTIFF, with the end goal of plotting one on top of the other. Two data sets from the NASA MEaSUREs program are used as examples.
Supported software languages:
Python
Customization Capabilities:
spatial subsetting
resampling
Process Earth science data on demand via a web service and gain low-latency access to customized data products using parameters supplied at the time of request.
Type: Downloadable Software
Customization Capabilities:
data reformatting
Download, bulk download, or visualize SMAP L3 and L4 data, guided by Python-based Jupyter Notebooks. These notebooks include examples of applying recommended quality flags for SMAP data.
Supported software languages:
Python
Find, download, and process select SMAP L3 and L4 data products using this R package. This tool includes functions to extract gridded products and reformat to a GeoTIFF.
Supported software languages:
R
Type: Downloadable Software
Customization Capabilities:
data reformatting
variable subsetting
Converts SnowMicroPen pnt files into csv/png products, with methods for estimating snow microstructure properties.
Supported software languages:
Python
Type: Downloadable Software
A Python-based Jupyter Notebook demonstrating how to access and visualize coincident snow data from the NSIDC DAAC across in-situ, airborne, and satellite platforms from NASA's SnowEx, ASO, and MODIS data sets, respectively.
Supported software languages:
Python
Customization Capabilities:
data reformatting
reprojection
spatial subsetting
Query, access, analyze, and download SnowEx data sets using a SQL database.
Supported software languages:
Python
Type: Downloadable Software
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