Every continent has periodically or permanently frozen bodies of water. How thick the ice is across the planet’s ocean, lakes, and rivers can vary from as thin as a few sheets of paper to more than 20 meters thick. Measuring ice depths is important for understanding aquatic and cryospheric processes, learning how ice relates to climate and sea level, determining safe transportation routes, tracking the ways ice thickness influences animal behavior patterns, and many other topics.

NASA has data from Earth-observing radar and microwave platforms that can be used to calculate historical and current ice thickness and other important related measurements.