ECCO V4r4: Monthly Sea-Ice Velocity on LLC90 Grid, 1992-2017

Monthly-averaged sea-ice velocity data from a 26-year, dynamically consistent ocean and sea-ice state estimate produced by NASA's ECCO project. The ECCO Version 4 Release 4 reconstruction assimilates observations from over a dozen satellite missions and in-situ programs like Argo and GO-SHIP. This dataset covers the period from 1992 to 2017 on the native Lat-Lon-Cap 90 (LLC90) computational grid.

Use Cases

• Modeling long-term trends in Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice drift based on the 26-year reconstruction.
• Validating satellite altimeter and radiometer data assimilation methods based on the described observational constraints.
• Analyzing the kinematic consistency of sea-ice motion with underlying ocean currents as part of the ECCO state estimate.
• Studying seasonal and interannual variability in sea-ice velocity fields on a global 1-degree model grid.

Strengths

• Covers a 26-year time range from 1992-01-01 to 2018-01-01.
• Assimilates data from multiple observational programs including satellite altimeters, radiometers, and in-situ measurements.
• Provides data on a native, high-resolution model grid (LLC90) for direct use in climate models.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific ML tasks.
• Data freshness should be verified as the last metadata update is listed as 2026-03-13.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Dynamically and kinematically consistent reconstruction (state estimate) from the MIT general circulation model (MITgcm), fit to observations in a least-squares sense.

Time Range

1992-01-01T12:00:00 to 2018-01-01T00:00:00

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 02:54:17.426005; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global