Daily Great Lakes Ice Concentration Grids Since 1973

Laurentian Great Lakes daily gridded ice concentration data from the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL). This dataset provides consistent daily records starting in 1973, supporting long-term climate and hydrological studies. Data are available in multiple formats including ASCII text files, shapefiles, and browse images.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term trends in winter ice cover using the daily concentration time series from 1973 onward.
• Validating regional climate or hydrological models with spatially gridded ice concentration data.
• Assessing seasonal ice extent and its ecological impacts on the Great Lakes using shapefile boundaries.
• Monitoring annual ice formation and melt dynamics via the series of daily browse image files.

Strengths

• Provides a continuous daily record of ice conditions extending from 1973 to the present.
• Data is spatially explicit, offered as gridded files covering the entire Laurentian Great Lakes region.
• Produced by the authoritative NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL).

Limitations

• Specific row counts, file sizes, and detailed column names are not provided by any source.
• Sources conflict on the last update date, with one platform listing 2026-03-13 and another 2023-05-21.

Provenance

Source

NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL)

Collection Method

Gridded observations and analysis of lake ice concentration.

Time Range

1973 onward

Freshness

2026-03-13 03:23:39.926443

Geography

Laurentian Great Lakes