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.

To Access Resource:

Questions? Email Resource Support Contact:

  • Bob Dattore
    dattore@ucar.edu
    UCAR/NCAR - Research Data Archive

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 90
Bounding Box South Lat -2.3779
Bounding Box West Long -180
Bounding Box East Long 180
Spatial Representation grid
Spatial Resolution N/A
Related Links N/A
Additional Information N/A
Resource Format ASCII
Standardized Resource Format ASCII
Asset Size 16.00 MB
Legal Constraints

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

Resource Support Name Bob Dattore
Resource Support Email dattore@ucar.edu
Resource Support Organization UCAR/NCAR - Research Data Archive
Distributor NCAR Research Data Archive
Metadata Contact Name N/A
Metadata Contact Email rdahelp@ucar.edu
Metadata Contact Organization NCAR Research Data Archive

Author Dewey, Kenneth F.
Heim Jr., Richard R.
Publisher Research Data Archive at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Computational and Information Systems Laboratory
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 2024-08-04T02:10:57Z
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.rda::d315000
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Dewey, Kenneth F., Heim Jr., Richard R.. (1985). Northern Hemisphere Weekly and Monthly Snow Cover. Research Data Archive at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Computational and Information Systems Laboratory. https://doi.org/10.5065/3842-MY85. Accessed 20 August 2025.

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