Where sea ice is and how cold it is, from NASA's MODIS sensor on Aqua (1 km detail)

In plain English

What it measures. Where sea ice is present each day and how warm the ice surface is, at 1 km detail along the satellite's swath.

How it's made. Calculated from the raw light and heat (Level-1B radiances) recorded by the MODIS instrument on Aqua, in 5-minute granules.

How & where you'd use it. Helps monitor sea ice coverage and surface temperature for navigation, weather, and climate tracking.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › ICE EXTENTCRYOSPHERE › SEA ICE › ICE TEMPERATURE

Coverage & cadence

Time span2002-07-04 → ongoing
Measured byAqua (MODIS)
Processing levelLevel 2
Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
FormatsHDF-EOS2
StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

Measure sea ice, snow cover and glaciers
Watch ice-sheet elevation change
Track freeze/thaw and permafrost

Official description

This global Level-2 (L2) product provides daily sea ice extent and ice surface temperature. The data are derived from Level-1B radiances acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board the Aqua satellite. Each data granule contains 5 minutes of swath data observed at a resolution of 1000 m. The terms "Version 61" and "Collection 6.1" are used interchangeably in reference to this release of MODIS data.

Get the data

myd29_access.py

import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="MYD29",
    version="61",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from NSIDC_CPRD

Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.

Official links

Search and order NASA Earth Science data using spatial and temporal filters. Reformatting, reprojecting, and subsetting options are available for some data sets. GET DATA
Quickly download a few files using a web browser, or access data through a command-line utility such as WGET. GET DATA
Search data by spatial and/or temporal ranges or file name. Choose from various download options, including a Python script. GET DATA
A Python library to search and access NASA Earth science data with just a few lines of code GET DATA
Find more data access options and help resources. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
MODIS/Aqua Sea Ice Extent 5-Min L2 Swath 1km, Version 61 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
MODIS Grids and Tile Locators VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
MODIS Sea Ice Products User Guide to Collection 6.1 VIEW RELATED INFORMATION