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Full catalog/NSIDC-0630
NSIDC-0630·v2·dataset

Microwave energy Earth gives off, sharpened daily, from sensors on the Aqua and DMSP satellites

Calibrated Enhanced-Resolution Passive Microwave Daily EASE-Grid 2.0 Brightness Temperature ESDR V002
land NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 active netCDF-4
Illustration of what Microwave energy Earth gives off, sharpened daily, from sensors on the Aqua and DMSP satellites shows
Illustration of the concept — not real satellite data.
In plain English

What it measures. How much microwave energy Earth's surface naturally emits, expressed as 'brightness temperature' (how warm a surface looks to a microwave sensor), provided as daily images at both sharpened and coarser resolutions.

How it's made. Assembled from a long line of satellite microwave radiometers, then carefully cross-calibrated, quality-checked, and placed onto standard map grids for consistency across decades.

How & where you'd use it. A foundational input for tracking sea ice, snow, soil moisture, and other surface conditions; most people use it through higher-level products built on top of it rather than directly.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › MICROWAVE › BRIGHTNESS TEMPERATURE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1978-10-25 → ongoing
  • Measured byAqua (AMSR-E) · DMSP 5D-2/F10 (SSM/I) · DMSP 5D-2/F11 (SSM/I) · DMSP 5D-2/F13 (SSM/I) · DMSP 5D-2/F14 (SSM/I) · DMSP 5D-2/F8 (SSM/I) · DMSP 5D-3/F15 (SSM/I) · DMSP 5D-3/F16 (SSMIS) · DMSP 5D-3/F17 (SSMIS) · DMSP 5D-3/F18 (SSMIS) · DMSP 5D-3/F19 (SSMIS) · GCOM-W1 (AMSR2) · Nimbus-7 (SMMR)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

The Calibrated Enhanced-Resolution Passive Microwave Daily EASE-Grid 2.0 Brightness Temperature ESDR, Version 2 data set is a multi-sensor Level 3 Earth Science Data Record (ESDR) with improvements upon Version 1 in cross-sensor calibration and quality checking, modern file formats, better quality control, improved projection grids, and local time-of-day (LTOD) processing. These data are gridded to three EASE-Grid 2.0 projections (North Azimuthal, South Azimuthal, and Cylindrical) and include enhanced-resolution imagery, as well as coarse-resolution, averaged imagery. Inputs include brightness temperature data from the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR), Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I), Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS), Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System (AMSR-E), and Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2).

Get the data

nsidc-0630_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="NSIDC-0630",
    version="2",
    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.