NASA AMSR-E Project: Daily Polar Snow, Ice, and Ocean Data

AMSR-E satellite data provides daily, gridded measurements of snow water equivalent, sea ice concentration, brightness temperatures, and ocean parameters. This collection includes multiple Level-3 products at spatial resolutions from 6.25 km to 25 km, mapped to polar stereographic grids for both hemispheres. Data are derived from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS on NASA's Aqua satellite.

Use Cases

• Tracking daily sea ice concentration and drift based on the Enhanced NASA Team (NT2) algorithm outputs
• Modeling snow depth over sea ice and snow water equivalent on land based on microwave brightness temperatures
• Analyzing ocean surface conditions like sea surface temperature and wind speed from the daily ocean product
• Comparing sea ice concentration estimates between different algorithms (NT2 vs. Basic Bootstrap Algorithm)

Strengths

• Includes multiple specific products (AE_SI12, AE_SI25, AE_SI6, AE_SID, AE_DyOcn) with defined resolutions
• Data is provided on standardized Northern and Southern Hemisphere polar stereographic grids
• License is clearly stated as CC-BY-4.0, permitting broad reuse

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

NASA Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) on the Aqua satellite.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing observations processed into Level-3 gridded geophysical products.

Time Range

Temporal coverage is daily, but specific date range is not provided.

Freshness

Update frequency is likely daily for some products, but last update date is unknown.

Geography

Global coverage with a focus on polar regions (Northern and Southern Hemispheres).