Worldview Snapshots is now available! The new low bandwidth web interface will be replacing the Rapid Response Subsets. Users can select custom bounding boxes and imagery layers with the new low bandwidth web interface. Users will be allowed to save their preferences with a URL and come back to the URL to retrieve their imagery of choice. Please transition to Worldview Snapshots as the Rapid Response Subsets will be discontinued soon.
If you are not constrained by bandwidth you can already switch to NASA’s Worldview and
Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), which provides access to the same imagery available in Rapid Response,
and many more layers! In Worldview users can create georeferenced image snapshots and download as GeoTIFF, PNG, JPEG or KMZ files – for more information,
see the Worldview and GIBS FAQ.
If you have any questions or comments, please contact support@earthdata.nasa.gov.
Rapid Ice Sheet Change Observatory (RISCO) Antarctic Areas
These subsets list areas of Antarctica that have a high likelyhood of rapid change in ice shelf and glacial ice conditions.
For more information, visit Rapid Ice (coming soon) and the Antarctic Geospatial Information Center.
The MODIS Rapid Response System generates complete mosaic images of
Antarctica every day from December 4, 2008, to the present. Images are
available throughout austral late spring, summer, and early fall as long as
enough visible light is present to generate an image of the region. Since
lighting is poor in austral late fall, winter, and early spring, images will not be
generated during that period.
Mosaic images are available in photo-like, true color from both the Terra
and Aqua satellites at 4km, 2km, 1km resolutions. A 367 false-color image
is also generated from Terra data. The mosaic is composed of
smaller image tiles, which are available individually at 250 m, 500 m, 1 km,
2 km, and 4 km resolutions.
The mosaic and additional information are available at:
Daily mosaic of Antarctica
More information about the mosaic
In addition to the mosaic of the entire region, a number of "cropped"
subsets have been created for smaller specific regions. The advantage of
this cropping approach is that the higher resolutions (500m and 250m) are
easily available without the end user having to download and possibly piece
together multiple tiles to cover the area of interest.
These cropped subset images are generated "on the fly" from the underlying
tiles, so the first time an image is generated it will take a few moments
(or more than a few for the higher resolutions) to load on the page. After
the first request, the image will stay in cache for awhile and will be
served up quickly.
Other Rapid Response Antarctica Projects:
Rapid Ice Sheet Change Observatory (RISCO) Antarctic Regions
Rapid Ice Sheet Change Observatory (RISCO) Antarctic Areas
US Antarctic Program Operations Areas
Additional cropped subsets may be created upon request, please contact us.