1. NSIDC DAAC UWG Meeting August 9-10 Boulder, CO
Access to NSIDC Data Across the Climate Research Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada
NSIDC DAAC UWG Meeting
August 9-10
Boulder, CO

2. Chris Derksen
Research Scientist
Climate Research Division
Environment and Climate Change Canada
SMAP freeze/thaw product development and validation
Snow cover/climate analysis:
-annual assessments (i.e. Arctic Report Card)
-Co-I of CMIP6 land MIP
Radar remote sensing of snow:
-on land (new mission concept studies)
-on sea ice (Operation IceBridge)

3. Environment and Climate Change Canada: Climate Processes Section
Science and Technology Branch
Atmospheric S & T
Water S & T
Wildlife/Landscape S & T
Science
Integration
Air Quality Research Division
Meteorological Research Division
Climate Research Division
Climate Processes
Climate Monitoring & Analysis
Climate Chemistry
Climate Modelling & Analysis

4. Brown.Ross@ouranos.ca; Libo.Wang@canada.ca; Chris Derksen@canada.ca
Science Question:
How much snow is there in the NH, how does it vary from year-to-year, and how is it changing?
Main data sets:
IMS-24km, IMS-4km
MEASURES snow product
GlobSnow and other SWE products
Daily brightness temperatures
(melt onset; snow algorithm development)
MODIS snow cover products (daily Climate Modeling Grid)
Data latency:
daily for NH snow monitoring
monthly for assessments such as BAMS State of the Climate
Data delivery:
ftp pull initiated by user (works fine)
Issues:
undetected missing daily IMS files (i.e. not documented). Can NSIDC automatically flag when an ftp failed from NIC and generate a request for a replacement file?
caveats/issues with data products are not clearly indicated and tend to be buried in the documentation or not mentioned by the dataset PI.
provide NetCDF version of MODIS snow cover products. The current format is EOS-HDF, often need to be converted to NetCDF formats first, especially for climate model evaluation studies.
For long time series data, data push tools (put data order on users’ ftp site) would be helpful.
Brown

5. Josh.King@canada.ca Science Question:
Validation of Operation IceBridge snow depth on sea ice products
Main data sets:
DMS L1B Geolocated and Orthorectified images
ATM L1B Elevation and Return Strength
POS/AV L1B Corrected Position and Attitude Data
Sea Ice Freeboard, Snow Depth, and Thickness
 Data latency:
Pull whenever updated
Data delivery:
ftp pull initiated by user (works fine)
Issues:
At the time of data access, there were no
geo-tools to subset the data into manageable
volumes. Had to download over 50 gb of data
and sort through it locally to get at what we wanted.
Variety of file types and formats.
Brown
King et al. (2015)

6. Stephen.Howell@canada.ca Science Question:
Evaluation of CMIP5 predictions of future Arctic sea ice extent
Main data sets:
Sea ice concentration (NT2/Boostrap)
Data latency:
Daily and Monthly
Data delivery:
ftp pull initiated by user (works fine)
Issues:
Map projections require re-gridding for CMIP-5 analysis
Brown
Laliberté et al. (2016)

7. Michael.Sigmond@canada.ca Science Question:
Evaluation of seasonal prediction skill for different sea-ice attributes in ECCC’s seasonal forecasting system CanSIPS and evaluation of operational forecasts
Main data sets:
NSIDC MEASURES & Markus et al (2009) for melt onset
Sea ice concentration (NT2; Bootstrap)
Data latency:
daily for operational forecasts
not an issue for historical forecast analysis
Data delivery:
ftp pull initiated by user (works fine)
Issues:
Climate modeling centre user group: limited background with respect to satellite products; search, download, and use with little consideration of product uncertainties
Brown
Sigmond et al. (2013)

8. Mike.Brady@canada.ca Science Question:
Determination of daily regional high resolution sea ice motion for operational forecast verification
Main data sets:
Sea ice age (Tschudi et al.)
AVHRR APP-x, (NSIDC via U of Wisconsin-Madison)
Concentration (NRT NASA Team2)
Other datasets (SLP, SST) are sourced from NOAA (i.e. NCEP/NCAR reanalysis)
 Data latency:
daily for operational forecast verification
N/A for historical analysis
Data delivery:
ftp pull initiated by user (works fine)
Issues:
Subsetting is kind of a pain, since we have to
download and subset locally. Not that big
of a deal, but would be nice to have
DAAC-side subsetting.
Map projections: move towards a single common
standard across all NSIDC-hosted datasets,
EASE-Grid 2.0 or Polar Stereographic?
Brown

9. Chris.Derksen@canada.ca Science Question:
Validation of SMAP landscape freeze/thaw products
Main data sets:
L3_FT_A
Cal/val data (protected access)
MEASURES freeze/thaw (Kimball)
Data latency:
Weekly-monthly
Data delivery:
ftp pull from JPL
Issues:
Brown

10. General Comments
Very positive feedback on services provided by NSIDC DAAC, from the perspective of both data providers and data users: very professional interactions in all regards
Most common issues pertain to user specific projection, subset needs, and communication of data quality/uncertainty information
Most issues/recommendations fall under the category of ‘nice to have’.
The ECCC CRD user community wants access to data, DAAC-side data preparation tools, efficient data transfer, to facilitate data analysis on our end