SMBObs: surface mass balance observations
Point measurements of the surface mass balance of the ice sheets. SMBObs is a records dataset (non-gridded data, see Records): its products, defined in SMBObs/records.toml, are prepared files in the form of the CF discrete sampling geometries, written to $FESMDATA_PRODUCTS/Records/SMBObs/SMBObs-<product>.nc.
Products
| Product | Source | Measurements | Variables |
|---|---|---|---|
SMBObs-SUMup2025 |
SUMup 2025 (Vandecrux et al., 2025), doi:10.18739/A2M61BR5M | 2.74 million in Greenland and Antarctica (cores, pits, stakes, radar, …), 871-2025 CE | smb_total, smb_total_sd (kg m-2, SMB of the measurement interval time_bnds), smb, smb_sd (kg m-2 yr-1, mean rate over the interval), z_srf, keys and tables of the name, method and reference |
Each measurement is an observation (featureType point, dimension obs) with its lat, lon and time (days since 1900-01-01, the middle of the interval). SUMup gives the SMB accumulated over the interval (smb_total); smb is smb_total / duration (see SUMup_smb). The density and subsurface temperature data of SUMup are not included.
Licences
| Source | Licence |
|---|---|
| SUMup 2025 | CC0 1.0 (Arctic Data Center); cite also the original studies (reference) |
Making the dataset
julia fesmdata.jl record SMBObsprepares the missing sources (<Source>/prepare.jl), checks the prepared files and copies them to $FESMDATA_PRODUCTS/Records/SMBObs/ (--overwrite to replace them).
Downloads
Download the files with fesmdata.jl into $FESMDATA_PRODUCTS/<Domain>/<GRID>/ (see Download), or one by one from the links below. All released datasets are listed under Products.
Version 2.0.0 (2026-10-12, packages). 1 files, 43.4 MB.
julia fesmdata.jl fetch SMBObs Records
SMBObs 1 files, 43.4 MB
| SMBObs-SUMup2025.nc | 43.4 MB |
Figures
SUMup2025
