ECCO V4r4: Monthly Sea-Ice and Snow Volume Fluxes on LLC90 Grid, 1992-2017

Global monthly-averaged sea-ice and snow horizontal volume fluxes on the native LLC90 grid from the ECCO Version 4 Release 4 ocean and sea-ice state estimate. The dataset is produced by NASA and covers the period from January 1992 to January 2018. It is a dynamically consistent reconstruction fit to multiple observational constraints including satellite altimetry, sea surface temperature, salinity, and in-situ ocean profiles.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term trends in sea-ice transport based on monthly volume fluxes.
• Validating sea-ice model outputs against a constrained, global state estimate.
• Studying the coupling between ocean circulation and sea-ice motion using the kinematically consistent reconstruction.
• Investigating snow mass redistribution on sea ice using the included snow volume fluxes.

Strengths

• Integrates multiple observational constraints from over 25 years of satellite and in-situ data.
• Provides a 26-year continuous record from 1992 to 2018.
• Uses a high-resolution LLC90 model grid native to the MITgcm.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data freshness should be verified as the last metadata update is listed in the future (2026).

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Dynamically and kinematically consistent reconstruction (state estimate) of the MITgcm, fit to observations in a least-squares sense.

Time Range

1992-01-01 to 2018-01-01

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 13 02:54:26.149205; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global