The Data Access Portal has information in 3 columns. An outline of the content in these columns is provided above. When first entering the search interface, all potential datasets are listed. Datasets are indicated in the map and results tabulation elements which are located in the middle column. The order of results can be modified using the "Sort by" option in the left column. On top of this column is normally relevant guidance information to user presented as collapsible elements.
If the user want to refine the search, this can be done by constraining the bounding box search. This is done in the map - the listing of datasets is automatically updated. Date constraints can be added in the left column. For these to take effect, the user has to push the button marked search. In the left column it is also possible to specific text elements to search for in the datasets. Again pushing the button marked "Search" is necessary for these to take action. Complex search patterns can be constructed by changing the operators used in the text field and prefixing words with '+' and '-' to indicate whether they have to be present or should not be present in the results.
Other elements indicated in the left and right columns are facet searches, i.e. these are keywords that are found in the datasets and all datasets that contain these specific keywords in the appropriate metadata elements are listed together. Further refinement can be done using full text, date or bounding box constraints. Individuals, organisations and data centres involved in generating or curating the datasets are listed in the facets in the right column.
Citation of data and service
If you use data retrieved through this portal, please acknowledge the efforts of the data portal and the data centres contributing.
The information required to properly cite a dataset is normally provided in the discovery metadata the datasets.
author,
title,
year of publication,
publisher (for data this is often the archive where it is housed),
edition or version,
access information (a URL or persistent identifier, e.g. DOI if provided)
The high-resolution Radarsat Antarctic Mapping Project (RAMP) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) combines topographic data from a variety of sources to provide consistent coverage of all of Antarctica.
This data set consists of an enhanced resolution digital elevation model (DEM) for the Greenland Ice Sheet. It was constructed by combining ASTER and SPOT 5 DEMs over the ice sheet periphery and margin with AVHRR photoclinometry for the interior and far north, and calibrating the data to approximate mean ICESat/GLAS elevations from 2003 to 2009.
This data set contains Level-2 geolocated surface elevation and canopy height measurements collected by the NASA Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS) Facility, an imaging lidar and camera sensor suite.
The Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) instrument on the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) provides global measurements of elevation, and repeats measurements along nearly-identical tracks; its primary mission is to measure changes in ice volume (mass balance) over time. This digital elevation model (DEM) of Greenland is derived from GLAS/ICESat laser altimetry profile data and provides new surface elevation grids of the ice sheets and coastal areas, with greater latitudinal extent and fewer slope-related effects than radar altimetry.
This DEM is generated from the first seven operational periods (from February 2003 through June 2005) of the GLAS instrument. It is provided on polar stereographic grids at 1 km grid spacing. The grid covers all of Greenland south of 83° N. Elevations are reported as centimeters above the datums, relative to both the WGS 84 ellipsoid and the EGM96 geoid, in two separate elevation data files. A data quality map of the interpolation distance is distributed in addition to the elevation data. ENVI header files are also provided.
The data are in 4-byte (long) signed integer binary files (big endian byte order) and are available via FTP.
<p><font color="#FF0000">Note: This data set is now on HTTPS so references to CD-ROM are historic and no longer applicable.</font></p>
The Ice Altimetry System (IAS) data seet contains surface elevations of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets derived from Seasat and GEOSAT radar altimetry data. The Seasat data were collected for a continuous 90 days in 1978, at latitudes between 72 degrees South and 72 degrees North. GEOSAT was launched in 1985 and placed in a nearly identical orbit to Seasat, also at latitudes of between 72 degrees South and 72 degrees North. The orbit was designed to provide high-density measurements over the Earth's surface, at a maximum grid spacing of 2.7 kilometers at the equator and much denser spacing over polar ice sheets. Data were acquired between April 1985 and September 1986.
Initially acquired by the Johns Hopkins APL (Applied Physics Lab) satellite tracking facility, the raw altimetry satellite data from Seasat and GEOSAT were passed on to NASA, via the US Navy. NASA developed slope correction routines for the higher slopes over the ice sheets, relative to ocean surfaces. The data are height profile Level 3 data and gridded height Level 4 data provided by the Oceans and Ice branch of the Laboratory for Hydrospheric Physics of Goddard Space Flight Center. Elevations from the full data rate (i.e., one measurement every 662.5 m) are provided in georeferenced databases. These elevations are relative to the WGS-84 ellipsoid. Gridded elevations at 10-kilometer and 20-kilometer spacing are provided in the gridded data sets created from the GEOSAT and Seasat data, respectively. Software to extract and browse subsets of these data is included. The IAS software also allows the user to view contours created from the gridded data and groundtracks of the full-rate data.
The Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) instrument on the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) provides global measurements of elevation, and repeats measurements along nearly-identical tracks; its primary mission is to measure changes in ice volume (mass balance) over time. This digital elevation model (DEM) of Antarctica is derived from GLAS/ICESat laser altimetry profile data and provides new surface elevation grids of the ice sheets and coastal areas, with greater latitudinal extent and fewer slope-related effects than radar altimetry.
This DEM is generated from the first seven operational periods (from February 2003 through June 2005) of the GLAS instrument. It is provided on polar stereographic grids at 500 m grid spacing. The grid covers all of Antarctica north of 86° S. Elevations are reported as centimeters above the datums, relative to both the WGS 84 ellipsoid and the EGM96 geoid, in two separate elevation data files. A data quality map of the interpolation distance is distributed in addition to the elevation data. ENVI header files are also provided.
The data are in 4-byte (long) signed integer binary files (big endian byte order) and are available via FTP.
This data set includes ice motion and topography measurements that were taken by measuring movement and altitude of poles set in the West Antarctic Ice Shelf. The data was acquired by Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements of poles. The position of the poles was measured twice; once in 2000, and again in 2002. Movement of the poles in that time show the ice motion velocity and direction.
GPS pole positions are given in latitude and longitude, and elevations are given in meters above the WGS1984 ellipsoid. The data are presented as tables in ASCII text files. Three maps of the area are included with the data tables.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded this work under grant number OPP-9909469.
The Antarctic atlas consists of 28 digital elevation maps which cover all of Antarctica north of 72.1 degrees south at a resolution of three kilometers. Each map contains surface elevations and coordinates for one atlas page covering 16 degrees of longitude. Data were acquired by the Geodetic Satellite (GEOSAT) Geodetic Mission (GM) from March 1985 through September 1986 and are available in both Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates, and in latitude and longitude coordinates.
Data were mapped using the UTM projection in atlas form to decrease the distortion that usually occurs at the poles. Many features of the Antarctic Ice Sheet are shown in more detail than in previous digital elevation models, especially along the margin of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. A geostatistical mapping technique (Herzfeld et al. 1993) improved the accuracy of surface elevations compared to previous GEOSAT elevation data sets. This atlas will facilitate the monitoring of changes in surface elevation that could indicate mass changes in the Antarctic Ice Sheet.
This data set consists of glacier regime parameters observed between 1945 and 2003. Data include annual mass balances, ablation, accumulation, and equilibrium-line altitude of mountain and subpolar glaciers outside the two major ice sheets. All available sources of information, such as publications, archived data, and personal communications have been collected, and include time series of more than 300 glaciers. Data have been digitized and quality checked.
Southern Greenland ice sheet elevation change estimates are derived from SEASAT and GEOSAT radar altimetry data from 1978 to 1988. Data are confined to 61-72 deg N, 30-50 deg W, above 1700 m elevation. The addition of GEOSAT Geodetic Mission (GM) data results in twice as many crossover points and 50% greater coverage than previous studies. Coverage above 2000 m elevation is improved to 90%, and about 75% of the area between 1700 m and 2000 m is now covered. Data are in ASCII text format, available via FTP, and consist of elevation change rate (dH/dt, cm/year) and corresponding error estimates in 50 km grid cells.
This data set provides time series of land-ice surface heights derived from the ICESat-2 ATL06 Land Ice Height product. It is intended primarily as an input for higher level gridded products but can also be used on its own as a spatially organized product that allows easy access to height-change information derived from ICESat-2 observations.
This data set contains nadir photon counting data captured over Antarctica using the Sigma Space photon counting lidar. Position and orientation data are included. The data were collected by scientists working on the International Collaborative Exploration of the Cryosphere through Airborne Profiling (ICECAP) project, which was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Collaborative Research Center, and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) with additional support from NASA Operation IceBridge.
This data set (ATL06) provides geolocated, land-ice surface heights (above the WGS 84 ellipsoid, ITRF2014 reference frame), plus ancillary parameters that can be used to interpret and assess the quality of the height estimates. The data were acquired by the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) instrument on board the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) observatory.
NOTE ON GLAS BINARY DATA: Access to all ICESat/GLAS binary data products at NSIDC DAAC was removed 01 August 2017. The Binary Data Subsetter also has been decommissioned. ICESat/GLAS data remain available in <a href="http://nsidc.org/data/glah06/versions/34">HDF5 format</a>.
The Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) instrument on the Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) provides global measurements of polar ice sheet elevation to discern changes in ice volume (mass balance) over time. Secondary objectives of GLAS are to measure sea ice roughness and thickness, cloud and atmospheric properties, land topography, vegetation canopy heights, ocean surface topography, and surface reflectivity.
GLAS has a 1064 nm laser channel for surface altimetry and dense cloud heights, and a 532 nm lidar channel for the vertical distribution of clouds and aerosols.
Level-1B elevation data (GLA06) include surface elevation, surface roughness assuming no slope, surface slope assuming no roughness, and geodetic and atmospheric corrections for range measurements. GLA06 is used in conjunction with GLA05 to create the Level-2 altimetry products (GLA12-15)
Each data granule has an associated browse product that users can quickly view to determine the general quality of the data in the granule. Browse products consist of image plots of key parameters and statistics. Data are in scaled integer binary format, big-endian (Unix) byte order.
This data set provides a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for Antarctica to 81.5 degrees south latitude, at a resolution of 5 km. Approximately twenty million data points were used to generate this data set. Data points were derived from ERS-1 radar altimetry during the geodetic phase from March 1994 to May 1995.