Where sea ice is and how cold it is, daily, from the MODIS sensor on the Aqua satellite (4 km detail)

In plain English

What it measures. Daily maps showing where sea ice covers the polar oceans and how cold the ice surface is.

How it's made. Built by combining finer 1 km observations from the Aqua satellite's MODIS instrument into a daily map at about 4 km resolution over both poles.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for monitoring sea ice cover and surface temperature in the Arctic and Antarctic, supporting climate research and ice condition 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 3
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-3 (L3) data set provides Northern and Southern Hemisphere maps of sea ice extent and ice surface temperature. The maps are generated by compositing 1 km observations from the 'MODIS/Aqua Sea Ice Extent Daily L3 Global 1km EASE-Grid Day’ (https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MYD29P1D.061) product. These data are provided daily in the EASE-Grid polar projection at a resolution of approximately 4 km. The terms "Version 61" and "Collection 6.1" are used interchangeably in reference to this release of MODIS data.

Get the data

myd29e1d_access.py

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="MYD29E1D",
    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 and IST Daily L3 Global 4km EASE-Grid Day, 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