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usicecenter.gov/

U.S. National Ice Center (USNIC) ice charts & data

Freeauth: noneCustom#osint#maritime#sea-ice#arctic#antarctic#navy✓ verified Nov 5, 2026

U.S. National Ice Center (USNIC) ice charts & data

The U.S. National Ice Center, a NOAA / U.S. Navy / USCG tri-agency centre, publishes daily Arctic ice shapefiles and KMZ, a weekly SIGRID-3 shapefile/KMZ, and Antarctic, Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic and IMS snow/ice products and archives, distinct from the already-listed NSIDC Sea Ice Index and Canadian Ice Service.

Coverage

Daily Arctic Marginal Ice Zone, Overlay and SPAROS shapefiles and KMZ; weekly SIGRID-3 shapefile/KMZ; Antarctic, Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic and IMS snow/ice products; plus archives, per the checked Products and Arctic Data pages. Hemispheric (Arctic/Antarctic) products are produced on an alternating weekly schedule. Exact archive start year and total product count are Not stated on the checked pages.

Verdict

This is the official U.S. ice-charting signal for agents routing Arctic, Antarctic and Great Lakes shipping — daily Arctic MIZ/Overlay/SPAROS shapefiles and KMZ, a weekly SIGRID-3 shapefile/KMZ, plus Antarctic, Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic and IMS snow/ice products and archives — distinct from the already-listed NSIDC Sea Ice Index and Canadian Ice Service. USNIC is a tri-agency centre (NOAA, U.S. Navy and USCG), and its production notice describes an alternating weekly schedule for Hemispheric products: Arctic one week, Antarctic the next. No separate licence is stated on the checked pages; Signal Lab links to USNIC's product pages rather than mirroring its charts.

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Use in your agent

Probe USNIC Products and Arctic Data pages. Checked against the provider's documentation on Nov 5, 2026.

Raw skill file (/skills/us-national-ice-center-products.md)Also in our MCP server: call get_ingestion_skill with {"slug": "us-national-ice-center-products"}.

Access

  • No key for the public USNIC Products and Arctic Data pages.

Request

bash
curl -I 'https://usicecenter.gov/Products'

Format

HTML product index; HTML Arctic Data page linking daily/weekly shapefile, KMZ and SIGRID-3 products.

Load into pandas and Parquet

Needs Python 3 with requests, pandas and pyarrow.

python
"""Check USNIC Products and Arctic Data page reachability -> pandas -> Parquet."""
import pandas as pd
import requests

UA = {"User-Agent": "SignalLabCheck/1.0"}
rows = []
for url, note in [
    ("https://usicecenter.gov/Products", "USNIC Products index"),
    ("https://usicecenter.gov/Products/ArcticData", "USNIC Arctic Data page"),
]:
    r = requests.get(url, headers=UA, timeout=60, allow_redirects=True)
    rows.append({"url": url, "note": note, "status": r.status_code, "bytes": len(r.content)})
df = pd.DataFrame(rows)
df.to_parquet("usnic_products_pages.parquet", index=False)
print(df)

Run by us on 2026-11-05 (python 3 | pandas | pyarrow | requests). Result: USNIC Products and Arctic Data pages both returned HTTP 200 on 2026-11-05.

Limits

  • Not stated numeric rate limit.
  • This skill does not download the shapefile/KMZ/SIGRID-3 products, only the documentation pages.

Quirks

  • Hemispheric products follow an alternating weekly schedule posted on the USNIC home page (Arctic one week, Antarctic the next), not both every week.
  • USNIC is distinct from the already-listed NSIDC Sea Ice Index and Canadian Ice Service.

Terms and attribution

  • No separate data licence is stated; NOAA / U.S. Navy / USCG tri-agency centre.

Sources

  • https://usicecenter.gov/: “NOTICE: Due to mission requirements, we are moving to an alternating weekly production schedule for Hemispheric products, with Arctic products provided one week and Antarctic products the following week. Changes are in effect until further notice.”
  • https://usicecenter.gov/Products/ArcticData: “The Arctic KMZ file is created off the USNIC Weekly Arctic ice analysis. The files contain SIGRID-3 information”

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