Northern Hemisphere Weekly and Monthly Snow Cover

The U.S. National Earth Satellite Service (NESS) created hand-drawn Northern Hemisphere maps of snow and ice boundaries on a weekly basis starting in 1966. A satellite meteorologist would use visible satellite data to determine the change in snow and ice boundaries from the previous week, and confirm any drastic changes with surface station observations. Since these maps were the only complete record of snow and ice extent, providing spatially-continuous coverage versus the historical daily point observations taken mainly in populated areas, they were digitized by the Climatology Program at the University of Nebraska onto a 190.5 km resolution polar-stereographic grid, and then objectively analyzed to produce various other snow cover products.

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Temporal Range

  • Begin:  1966-11
    End:  1991-12

Keywords

Resource Type dataset
Temporal Range Begin 1966-11
Temporal Range End 1991-12
Temporal Resolution N/A
Bounding Box North Lat N/A
Bounding Box South Lat N/A
Bounding Box West Long N/A
Bounding Box East Long N/A
Spatial Representation N/A
Spatial Resolution N/A
Related Links N/A
Additional Information N/A
Resource Format ASCII
Standardized Resource Format ASCII
Asset Size 16.224 MB
Legal Constraints

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Access Constraints None
Software Implementation Language N/A

Resource Support Name N/A
Resource Support Email datahelp@ucar.edu
Resource Support Organization N/A
Distributor NSF NCAR Geoscience Data Exchange
Metadata Contact Name N/A
Metadata Contact Email datahelp@ucar.edu
Metadata Contact Organization NSF NCAR Geoscience Data Exchange

Author Dewey, Kenneth F.
Heim Jr., Richard R.
Publisher NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research
Publication Date 1985-04-17
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) https://doi.org/10.5065/3842-MY85
Alternate Identifier d315000
Resource Version N/A
Topic Category climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere
Progress completed
Metadata Date 2025-10-09T01:23:23Z
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.gdex::d315000
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Dewey, Kenneth F., Heim Jr., Richard R.. (1985). Northern Hemisphere Weekly and Monthly Snow Cover. NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research. https://doi.org/10.5065/3842-MY85. Accessed 24 October 2025.

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