Microproduct data guidebeginner

NSIDC Sea Ice Index

Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice extent and concentration time series for building seasonal ice monitors and climate-comparison tools.

Start the guide Open official source

At a glance

Difficulty
Beginner — comfortable for a first prototype
Size
Tiny · ≤0.05 GB
Formats
CSV, GeoTIFF, PNG
Access
Download
API key
Not required
Provider
National Snow and Ice Data Center
Updates
Daily
Data terms
NASA NSIDC DAAC data use and citation guidance

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

The Sea Ice Index provides daily and monthly Northern Hemisphere extent CSV files derived from passive-microwave satellite retrievals. Start with the monthly North CSV. Extent is a thresholded ice-covered area, not ice thickness or volume, and near-real-time values can be revised.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • An internet connection
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Open the G02135 dataset page and locate the Sea Ice Index CSV archives.
  2. 2.Download the Northern Hemisphere monthly extent file.
  3. 3.Keep date, extent, and missing flags before plotting.
Open official source
3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas

import pandas as pd

ice = pd.read_csv(
    "https://noaadata.apps.nsidc.org/NOAA/G02135/north/monthly/data/N_09_extent_v3.0.csv",
)
ice.columns = [column.strip() for column in ice.columns]
ice["extent"] = pd.to_numeric(ice["extent"], errors="coerce")
ice["date"] = pd.to_datetime(
    dict(year=ice["year"], month=ice["mo"], day=1)
)
print(ice[["date", "extent", "area"]].tail())
4

Test a useful signal

Track September Arctic sea-ice extent

Describe how September Northern Hemisphere extent has changed across the published record.

  1. 01Convert year and month to dates and drop rows with missing extent.
  2. 02Plot September extent and mark the minimum year in the extract.
  3. 03Explain that extent is not thickness or volume and that near-real-time months can be revised.

Dataset details

National Snow and Ice Data Center is an academic source. Last verified 2026-08-18. Temporal coverage: 1978-present.

Theme

Environment & Hazards

Domains

ClimateCryosphereEarth Observation

Data types

Time SeriesGeospatialTabular

Tasks

Climate MonitoringTrend AnalysisSeasonal Comparison

Geography

Global

Formats

CSVGeoTIFFPNG

Provider

National Snow and Ice Data Center

Data terms

NASA NSIDC DAAC data use and citation guidance