NASA 2010_AN_NASA Project: Ice Thickness and Bed Elevation for Greenland and Antarctica

Level-3 tomographic ice thickness measurements and errors over Greenland and Antarctica, with some files providing bed elevation. The data were derived from measurements taken by the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder (MCoRDS) instrument and collected as part of NASA Operation IceBridge funded campaigns. Data access requires an Earthdata Login account and is available via AWS S3.

Use Cases

• Model ice sheet volume and mass balance based on ice thickness measurements.
• Analyze subglacial topography and bedrock elevation for geological studies.
• Validate and calibrate satellite altimetry data using ground-truthed radar measurements.
• Study glacial dynamics and flow by integrating thickness and bed elevation data.

Strengths

• Includes derived Level-3 data products (tomographic ice thickness and errors), which suggests some processing has been applied.
• Covers two major ice sheets: Greenland and Antarctica.
• Data originates from NASA's Operation IceBridge, a major airborne campaign.
• License is CC-BY-4.0, permitting sharing and adaptation.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total data size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

NASA Operation IceBridge campaigns, Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS).

Collection Method

Airborne measurements from the Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder (MCoRDS) instrument.

Time Range

null

Freshness

null

Geography

Greenland and Antarctica.