---
name: us-national-ice-center-products-ingestion
description: "How to get U.S. National Ice Center (USNIC) ice charts & data data into a pandas DataFrame and Parquet: access, the request, the format, limits, quirks and terms."
---

# Probe USNIC Products and Arctic Data pages

Source entry: https://signal-lab.qdt.ai/datasets/us-national-ice-center-products
Provider: https://usicecenter.gov/Products
Checked against the provider's documentation: 2026-11-05

## 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.
- Terms page: https://usicecenter.gov/Products

## 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"

## Help improve this skill
Missing a source, or see something to improve? Call the MCP tool suggest_source or feedback (or POST /api/suggest or /api/feedback). Reviewed ideas: https://signal-lab.qdt.ai/agent-suggestions

Information for educational purposes only. Free tiers, limits and licenses belong to the providers and may change; check the provider's own terms before using the data.