Surface Mass Balance and Snow Depth on Sea Ice Working Group (SUMup) snow density, accumulation on land ice, and snow depth on sea ice datasets

The SUMup dataset contains Arctic and Antarctic surface mass-balance field observations of snow density, accumulation on land ice, and snow depth on sea ice over an ~60 year time period. The goal of this dataset is to create an expandable, standardized dataset of field measurements of surface mass balance components that is consistent in format, properly described, and easy for researcher to use. SUMup contains 3 subdatasets of snow density, accumulation on land ice, and snow depth on sea ice containing a total of over 1,000,000 measurements from a vast number of sites across the polar regions. When using this dataset please cite both the individual researchers who provided the data as listed in the Citation field as well as this dataset. Each measurement has a corresponding date, latitude, longitude, measurement, method, citation, and additional information as explained in the metadata/readme files. This aggregated, field measurement dataset can, and has been used, to validate current and future modeling and remote sensing retrievals. The SUMup dataset is a living dataset that will be expanded and released approximately yearly. This current version is the SUMup July 2018 release.