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ISLSCP II Northern Hemisphere Monthly Snow Cover Extent

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

This ISLSCP data set is derived from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) Northern Hemisphere EASE-Grid Weekly Snow Cover and Sea Ice Extent product which combines snow cover and sea ice extent at weekly intervals for October 1978 through June 2001, and snow cover alone from 1966 through June 2001. The original data set was the first representation of combined snow and sea ice measurements derived from satellite observations for the period of record. Designed to facilitate study of Northern Hemisphere seasonal fluctuations of snow cover and sea ice extent, the original NSIDC data set also includes monthly climatologies describing average extent, probability of occurrence, and variance.This data set shows the extent of snow on the land at a variety of scales (1.0 degree, 0.5 degree, 0.25 degree). The values represent the percentage of days in each month where snow was present -- 100 means 100% of the month, 80 means 80% of the month, etc. There are 4 .zip files provided. Missing data is represented by -99 for water and -88 for land. The data were originally in a yearly tabular format. The file was converted to multi-scale maps by plotting each point in the tabular data onto a map of -99 (water) and -88 (land) created from the standard ISLSCP II Land/Sea Mask.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
Publisher ORNL_DAAC
Maintainer
Identifier 10.3334/ORNLDAAC/982
Data Last Modified 2025-09-11
Category Earth Science
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id dd043a31-9c69-46e4-abbc-bcc12509d15b
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://search.earthdata.nasa.gov/search?q=snow_cover_xdeg_982&ac=true
Old Spatial {"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180.0,"NorthBoundingCoordinate":90.0,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180.0,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-90.0},"CARTESIAN"
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 6e239d327a2f1e3a4af1a418ad3766502ec7f16d5c84c15f9c4ecb44bb0a9e4e
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 1986-01-01/1986-01-01

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