Sturm & Liston seasonal snow classification#

snow-classification · theme snow · live

Global seasonal snow classes (tundra, boreal forest, maritime, ephemeral, prairie, montane forest, ice) from climatologies of air temperature, precipitation and wind speed, at 10 arcsec (~300 m) and three coarser grids.

import easysnowdata as esd

aoi = (-121.94, 46.72, -121.54, 46.99)   # Mount Rainier
data = esd.snow.snow_classification.load(aoi)

Credentials

The default route needs earthdata; see the credentials page for the setup.

An open alternative exists: source="hosted-cog".

Sources#

2 routes serve this product; the first is the default and source= picks another. The return contract is the same either way.

source

provider

credentials

resolution

extent

temporal

latency

notes

nsidc (default)

raster_http

earthdata

300 m

global

static (2021)

—

authoritative; not cloud-hosted, the HTTPS directory redirects to Earthdata Login, so files are cached locally on first use. Also serves the 2.5 arcmin, 5 arcmin and 30 arcmin grids and the North America subset

hosted-cog

raster_http

none

300 m

global

static (2021)

—

COG on the uwcryo Azure blob, anonymous range reads; 10 arcsec global only. Location likely to change (a Zenodo record or a GitHub release asset): the hosting account is funded to 2026-10-26 (§12 Q8)

Where each route points#

nsidc — NSIDC-0768 live

https://daacdata.apps.nsidc.org/pub/DATASETS/nsidc0768_global_seasonal_snow_classification_v01

hosted-cog — hosted COG (Azure) live

https://uwcryo.blob.core.windows.net/snowmelt/eric/snow_classification/SnowClass_GL_300m_10.0arcsec_2021_v01.0.tif

Variables#

variable

units

dtype

nodata

categorical

snow_class

—

uint8

9

yes (9 classes)
snow_class classes (9)

value

meaning

1

Tundra

2

Boreal Forest

3

Maritime

4

Ephemeral (includes no snow)

5

Prairie

6

Montane Forest

7

Ice (glaciers and ice sheets)

8

Ocean

9

Fill

Provenance#

Licence · NASA Earthdata (free registration)

DOI · 10.5067/99FTCYYYLAQ0

Cite the data as

Liston, G. E. and Sturm, M. (2021). Global Seasonal-Snow Classification, Version 1. Boulder, Colorado USA. NSIDC.

Documentation

Loader · easysnowdata.snow.snow_classification.load