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)
Notice to Data Users: The documentation for this data set was provided solely by the Principal Investigator(s) and was not further developed, thoroughly reviewed, or edited by NSIDC. Thus, support for this data set may be limited.
This data set is comprised of in situ data collected as part of the Soil Moisture Experiment 2004 (SMEX04).
Notice to Data Users: The documentation for this data set was provided solely by the Principal Investigator(s) and was not further developed, thoroughly reviewed, or edited by NSIDC. Thus, support for this data set may be limited.
This data set contains in situ data collected using a multispectral radiometer and a plant-canopy analyzer over the Soil Moisture Experiment 2004 (SMEX04) areas of Arizona, USA and Sonora, Mexico.
Notice to Data Users: The documentation for this data set was provided solely by the Principal Investigator(s) and was not further developed, thoroughly reviewed, or edited by NSIDC. Thus, support for this data set may be limited.
This data set contains a collection of photographs intended to be visual aid for investigators of the SMEX05 data sets in the Ames, Iowa USA area. Photographs of each sampling site are provided with several views to give an idea of the land cover and characteristics of the vegetation.
Notice to Data Users: The documentation for this data set was provided solely by the Principal Investigator(s) and was not further developed, thoroughly reviewed, or edited by NSIDC. Thus, support for this data set may be limited.
This data set consists of Vegetation Water Content (VWC) data for two Soil Moisture Experiment 2004 (SMEX04) regional study areas: Arizona, USA and Sonora, Mexico.
This Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) data set was developed from Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) data for use in studying land cover features during the Soil Moisture Experiment 2003 (SMEX03).
This data set contains ice thickness, surface and bed elevation, and echo strength measurements taken over Antarctica using the Hi-Capability Airborne Radar Sounder (HiCARS) instrument. The data were collected by scientists working on the Investigating the Cryospheric Evolution of the Central Antarctic Plate (ICECAP) project, which was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) with additional support from NASA Operation IceBridge.
This data set contains the traced deep radiostratigraphy of the Greenland Ice Sheet from airborne deep ice-penetrating radar data collected by The University of Kansas Improved Coherent Radar Depth Sounder (ICORDS), Advanced Coherent Radar Depth Sounder (ACORDS), Multi-Channel Radar Depth Sounder (MCRDS), and Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder (MCoRDS) instruments between 1993 and 2013. This is an IceBridge-related data set.
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/glah01/versions/33">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-1A altimetry data (GLA01) include the transmitted and received waveform from the altimeter.
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.
Notice to Data Users: The documentation for this data set was provided solely by the Principal Investigator(s) and was not further developed, thoroughly reviewed, or edited by NSIDC. Thus, support for this data set may be limited.
This data set contains data from in situ meteorological measurements collected during the Soil Moisture Experiment 2004 (SMEX04) in Arizona, USA.
The <em>SMEX03 Site Photographs</em> data set includes photographs of the regional study areas of Alabama, Georgia, and Oklahoma, USA as part of the 2003 Soil Moisture Experiment (SMEX03).
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/glah13/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.
This level-2 altimetry product (GLA13) provides surface elevations for sea ice. Data also include the laser footprint gelocation and reflectance, as well as geodetic, instrument, and atmospheric corrections for range measurements.
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.
Notice to Data Users: The documentation for this data set was provided solely by the Principal Investigator(s) and was not further developed, thoroughly reviewed, or edited by NSIDC. Thus, support for this data set may be limited.
A part of the Soil Moisture Experiment 2004 (SMEX04), this data set includes a diverse collection of in situ data measured along a topographical transect in northern Sonora, Mexico.
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/glah02/versions/33">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-1A atmospheric data (GLA02) include the normalized relative backscatter for the 532 nm and 1064 nm channels, and low-level instrument corrections such as laser energy (1064 nm and 532 nm), photon coincidence (532 nm), and detector gain correction (1064 nm).
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.
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/glah08/versions/33">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-2 planetary boundary layer (PBL) and elevated aerosol layer heights data (GLA08) contains PBL heights, ground detection heights, and top and bottom heights of elevated aerosols from -1.5 km to 20.5 km (4 sec sampling rate) and from 20.5 km to 41 km (20 sec sampling rate).
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.