Rutgers University Climate Lab

Available Data

Data Requests

If you are interested in plain text snow extent matrices (legacy file format) or other products, such as monthly matrices, or snow extent areas for a specific geographic area please email support.

Rutgers Northern Hemisphere 24 km Weekly Snow Cover Extent

This dataset provides weekly hemispheric snow cover extent from 1980 forward, increasing the resolution of historical weekly SCE maps to 24 km. These data are available in netCDF from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC):

Rutgers Northern Hemisphere 24 km Weekly Snow Cover Extent, September 1980 Onward, Version 1

Gridded North American Snow, Temperature, and Precipitation

This product offers 1° by 1° daily snow depth, snowfall, temperature, and precipitation data for North America. These data are available in netCDF from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC):

Daily Gridded North American Snow, Temperature, and Precipitation, 1959-2009, Version 1

The following archive contains 1° by 1° gridded North American snowfall described by Kluver et al., 2016. Daily files span from 1900–2009:

Download NorAm Gridded Daily Snowfall v4 [tar, 2.3 GB]

Weekly Snow Cover Extent Dataset Access

The Climate Data Record (CDR) of Northern Hemisphere (NH) Snow Cover Extent (SCE) is freely available in netCDF format from the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

Current version is v01r01. To access weekly data from the NCEI Climate Data Record Program:

Download the latest NH SCE using HTTP [netCDF]

Use the NCEI THREDDS Data Server to access NH SCE

NH SCE Dataset Citation

How to cite this dataset when used as a source:

Robinson, David A., Estilow, Thomas W., and NOAA CDR Program (2012): NOAA Climate Data Record (CDR) of Northern Hemisphere (NH) Snow Cover Extent (SCE), Version 1. [indicate subset used]. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. doi: 10.7289/V5N014G9 [access date].

NH SCE Dataset Literature

Selected references:

Estilow, T.W., A.H. Young and D.A. Robinson (2015) A long-term Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent data record for climate studies and monitoring. Earth System Science Data, 7, 137-142, doi:10.5194/essd-7-137-2015.

Robinson, D.A. and A. Frei (2000) Seasonal variability of northern hemisphere snow extent using visible satellite data. Professional Geographer, 51, 307-314, doi:10.1111/0033-0124.00226.

Robinson, D.A., K. F. Dewey and R. Heim, Jr. (1993) Global snow cover monitoring: an update. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 74, 1689-1696.