Projects in Development
As the NSIDC DAAC develops new projects, this Web page offers a place for our users to find these new projects before they are fully developed and available through our Web site in the traditional way.
Current Projects
The following projects are new at NSIDC. This means that we may still be developing Web sites, data sets, and tools for these projects. Also, these projects may not be fully accessible to the general public through our Web site navigation at this time.
IceBridge
The Operation IceBridge mission, initiated in 2009, collects airborne remote sensing measurements to bridge the gap between NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) mission and the upcoming ICESat-2 mission. IceBridge mission observations and measurements include coastal Greenland, coastal Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsula, interior Antarctica, the southeast Alaskan glaciers, and Antarctic and Arctic sea ice. The NASA IceBridge mission combines multiple instruments to map ice surface topography, bedrock topography beneath the ice sheets, grounding line position, ice and snow thickness, and sea ice distribution and freeboard. Data from laser altimeters and radar sounders are paired with gravitometer, magnetometer, mapping camera, and other data to provide dynamic, high-value, repeat measurements of rapidly changing portions of land and sea ice.
NSIDC manages data for products derived from NASA's Operation IceBridge aircraft missions, and implements tools and services extending the uses of IceBridge data products. To see what data products NSIDC is managing, go to the IceBridge Data Web site. For a glimpse of the tools being implemented, visit the IceBridge Portal, which offers access to all the flight line missions and the mission reports. As the development of the Portal progresses, it will soon offer direct access to the data, as well as other features.
MEaSUREs
The NASA Making Earth Science Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) project aims to develop consistent global and continent scale data records related to earth science, or Earth System Data Records (ESDRs). MEaSURES is a program funded by NASA to support individual scientists and groups in data product generation, using proven algorithms and input data sets. In effect, MEaSURES projects function as additional processing facilities for NASA, and are subject to rigorous standards for data quality, validation, algorithm description, documentation, and delivery.
NSIDC archives and distributes data from several MEaSUREs projects related to the cryosphere. These data sets are intended to serve as Earth System Data Records (ESDR), providing long-term broad-scale information about the Earth. For more information about the MEaSURES data sets here at NSIDC, see the NASA MEaSUREs Data at NSIDC Web site.
Libre
Libre is a project devoted to liberating science data from its traditional constraints of publication, location, and findability. Leveraging open-source technology and data management standards, we make it easy for scientists to make their data discoverable and usable by the whole world. Libre is in the process of creating tools to aid in the process of liberating the data. See what tools Libre has created so far.
Libre is a joint project comprised of both the Community-Enabled Discovery, Access, Publishing, and Enhancement (CEDDAPE) project and the Aggregation Services for Ice Sheets (ASIS) project. CEDDAPE is funded by the Natioanl Science Foundation (NSF) and ASIS is funded by the 2009 NASA ACCESS ROSES Project.
NIMBUS
When NASA launched the first Nimbus satellite in the 1960s, they also launched an era of Earth observations from space. While the early Nimbus satellites provided meteorological and other observations, methods did not yet exist to detect features such as the margins of the sea ice cover in the Arctic and Antarctic. Even if they had, the limits of computer processing in those days would have made quantitative analysis unfeasible. These early satellite data still reside in NASA archives on archaic, two-inch tape media. When NSIDC scientist Walt Meier and project manager Dave Gallaher learned that NASA researchers had retrieved 1960s images of Earth from the Lunar Orbiter, they wondered if early NASA satellite data could also yield information about sea ice conditions before 1979. They saw a disappearing window of opportunity to recover these data. Only one tape drive remained in the world that could read the Ampex two-inch media. Plus, the original Nimbus researchers were now in their late 70s and 80s, and contact with them would be critical to answering some of the necessary instrumentation questions.
The Nimbus satellites carried a High Resolution Infrared Radiometer (HRIR), with a resolution of 8 kilometers, a medium-resolution infrared radiometer (MRIR), and an Advanced Vidcon Camera System (AVCS). Although Nimbus collected data for only shortperiods, Meier suspected that these early Nimbus satellites likely captured the annual Arctic sea ice minimum, occurring each September. Reprocessing could make new 1960s-era global data available to the entire Earth science community. The techniques could also bring the quality of archaic data from other Earth-observing satellites up to contemporary standards, reinvigorating the data sets for current applications.
More work is needed to reprocess 2,600 half-orbit records, develop a de-jitter algorithm, and then complete a painstaking process of image comparison to separate clouds from ice. Processing of more data could allow Meier and other scientists to determine sea ice extent during the Nimbus I through III campaigns (1964, 1966, and 1969). The team also hopes to extend their methods to later instruments, and characterize both minimum Arctic and maximum Antarctic sea ice extent for 1964 to 1978. If successful, the sea ice climatologies would gain up to fourteen years of data—an increase of 50 percent over their temporal span today.
Future Projects
The following are projects that NSIDC will be working on in the near future. As these projects progress, their status will be updated and the project will be moved to the Current Project status.
Soil Moisture Active-Passive (SMAP)
The Soil Moisture Active-Passive (SMAP) mission will use a combined radiometer and high-resolution radar to measure surface soil moisture and freeze-thaw state, providing for scientific advances and societal benefits. Direct measurements of soil moisture and freeze/thaw state are needed to improve our understanding of regional water cycles, ecosystem productivity, and processes that link the water, energy, and carbon cycles. Soil moisture information at high resolution enables improvements in weather forecasts, flood and drought forecasts, and predictions of agricultural productivity and climate change.
SMAP's primary science objective is to create global, high-resolution mapping of soil moisture and its freeze/thaw state to:
- link terrestrial water, energy and carbon cycle processes
- estimate global water and energy fluxes at the land surface
- quantify net carbon flux in boreal landscapes
- extend weather and climate forecast skill
- develop improved flood and drought prediction capability.
NSIDC will archive and distribute the passive microwave and higher level products. The Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF) and NSIDC will build a cost effective synergistic data access system for SMAP data from both archives, ancillary, and other supporting data sets.
