NICES Earth & Climate Data Portal

NICES (National Information System for Climate and Environment Studies) is the Earth and climate data portal of the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), ISRO, Hyderabad. Established on 28 September 2012 as a multi-institutional programme, it generates a national climate database derived from Indian and other Earth observation satellites, in polar and geostationary orbits, for climate change impact assessment and mitigation.

NRSC algorithms retrieve geophysical parameters from satellite radiance, backscatter and brightness temperature. The catalogue has four themes:

• Ocean: chlorophyll-a and diffuse attenuation from the Ocean Colour Monitor (OCM-1, OCM-2, EOS-06 OCM-3), surface winds and wind stress from the OSCAT, SCATSAT-1 and EOS-06 scatterometers, sea surface height and currents from SARAL AltiKa altimetry with SCATSAT-1 winds, ocean heat content and tropical cyclone heat potential.
• Atmosphere: half-hourly cloud fraction and cloud-top temperature from INSAT-3D and Kalpana-1, tropospheric ozone, boundary-layer height, water vapour and hourly GSMap ISRO rainfall.
• Terrestrial: annual cropland, OCM-2 NDVI, vegetation fraction and albedo, AWiFS water-body fraction and snow albedo, surface soil moisture, net primary and ecosystem productivity (including MODIS-based layers), a MODIS-based forest fire regime, and forest and land degradation layers.
• Cryosphere: AWiFS snow-cover fraction over the Himalaya, snow melt and freeze, and Antarctic snowmelt.

NICES provides 13 Essential Climate Variables. Most products come with a technical document. Products can be visualised and downloaded free of charge through Bhuvan's NRSC Open EO Data Archive after registration; users may build value-added products and must acknowledge NRSC. The portal also hosts Hot Weather Outlook and ENSO Outlook climate services.